Hating Empire Properly: The Two Indies and the Limits of Enlightenment Anticolonialism

Sunil M. Agnani

Published by Fordham University Press 2013

Hating Empire Properly

The Two Indies and the Limits of Enlightenment Anticolonialism

Sunil M. Agnani

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823252169

Overview
Contents

About this book

Discusses arguments made against empire and colonialism in the eighteenth century through works by Denis Diderot and Edmund Burke. Explores the limits and failures of their arguments by emphasizing what they wrote on the two indies, especially India and Haiti.

Author / Editor information

Agnani Sunil M. :

Sunil M. Agnani is Assistant Professor of English and History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has held previous positions at the Princeton Society of Fellows and the University of Michigan.

Reviews

Sunil Agnani’s Hating Empire Properly: The Two Indies and the Limits of Enlightenment Anticolonialism (winner of the 2014 Henry Levin Prize) is a rich contribution to a nascent but ever-expanding field we could call colonial Enlightenment studies.

. . he [Agnani] offers a fresh textual analysis of a selection of colonial writings by Diderot and Burke.

—David Scott:
What should it mean to hate empire,properly? What modes of conceptual critique, what ethos of engagement, what attitude to the modern, should we adopt? In this learned and deftly argued book, Sunil Agnani offers us a revised picture of the conceits of Europe’s self-consciousness of empire by holding up the internal anticolonial mirror of Diderot and Burke. If Enlightenment is neither single nor seamless, neither a choice nor a prison, what Agnani’s reading underscores is the truth of the dictum that, for its conscripts anyway, the only way out is through.

—Uday S. Mehta:
Agnani offers wonderfully nuanced readings of two profound and vexing 18th-century thinkers–Diderot and Burke.Agnani refuses, just as Diderot and Burke did, to be defined and constrained by shallow distinctions that have so often marked our view of the Enlightenment, its critics and their relationship to European imperialism. This is a work of sustained subtlety and intelligence.

—Srinivas Aravamudan:
“Hating Empire Properly will be praised by political philosophers as well as literary critics for its brilliant ‘solution’ of the Edmund Burke ‘problem’: how could a ‘liberal’ on America and India also be a‘conservative’ on France? How can we grasp Denis Diderot’s defense of colonial commerce alongside his denunciations of empire? Neither apologia nor jeremiad,Agnani’s compelling study of the Enlightenment shows subtle consistencies where previous critics could only see contradiction."

—Suvir Kaul:
Agnani argues convincingly that Enlightenment historiography is imperial historiography; that is, it derives the terms of its understanding of historical transitions and epochal events (in Europe as elsewhere) from the history of empires, past and present. Agnani focuses on Diderot and Burke, but his carefully-crafted analyses of the energy and limits of their anti-colonialist writing illuminate the wider field of colonial discourse studies.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Prologue: Enlightenment, Colonialism, Modernity Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
Introduction: Companies, Colonies, and Their Critics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I Denis Diderot: The Two Indies of the French Enlightenment
1 Doux Commerce, Douce Colonisation: Consensual Colonialism in Diderot’s Thought Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
2 On the Use and Abuse of Anger for Life: Ressentiment and Revenge in the Histoire des deux Indes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	46
PART II Edmund Burke: Political Analogy and Enlightenment Critique
3 Between France and India in 1790: Custom and Arithmetic Reason in a Country of Conquest Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
4 Jacobinism in India, Indianism in English Parliament: Fearing the Enlightenment and Colonial Modernity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	109
5 Atlantic Revolutions and Their Indian Echoes: The Place of America in Burke’s Asia Writings Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
Epilogue. Hating Empire Properly: European Anticolonialism at Its Limit Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Pages
- Main content: 320
Keywords: Enlightenment; postcolonial; post-colonial; anticolonial; empire; imperialism; colony; modernity; Diderot; Burke; Haiti; India

eBook

Published: May 9, 2013
ISBN: 9780823252169