Review:
"Victorian conceptions of empire have generally been considered in isolation from domestic political debate: the province of the economic or imperial historian rather than the historian of politics. In this impressive study, Duncan Bell resituates the arguments about a union of English-speaking peoples as an integral part of an anxious post-1870 debate about the condition of Britain in what contemporaries saw as a newly globalized world. Greater Britain was put forward as one solution to mass democracy or national decline. This is a pioneering work of research, which invites reconsideration of Victorian political thought as a whole."--Gareth Stedman Jones, University of Cambridge
"In this fine book, Bell has performed a real service by refocusing attention on the grand late-nineteenth-century debate about creating a 'Greater Britain' capable of rivaling the United States. It injects vigorous new life into a subject hitherto often a byword for dullness."--Peter Cain, Sheffield Hallam University
"Globalization, empire, and the uncertain future of the state are all topics high on the contemporary intellectual agenda, but ours is not the first generation to have viewed their interconnections with both anxiety and expectation. Duncan Bell's masterly survey of late-nineteenth-century British political thought shows how a generation of creative thinkers tackled transnationalism almost a century before the term was invented. The book is a major contribution to modern intellectual history and will surely become one of the foundational texts in the emerging field of the history of international thought."--David Armitage, Harvard University
"This is a very serious and illuminating study of a range of debates around the question of Britain as a focal point of an imperial or even a world order in the second half of the nineteenth century. Duncan Bell offers a comparative analysis of great subtlety and frequent insight concerning the ways an important political discourse was shaped, what background factors influenced and constrained it, and why political theorists and historians of political thought should take that discourse seriously. Readers interested in the antecedents of current debates on globalization will benefit from locating those debates historically."--Michael Freeden, University of Oxford
"The Idea of Greater Britain is an erudite presentation of an important but neglected stream of Victorian political thought. Duncan Bell convincingly demonstrates the conceptual inventiveness of the idea of Greater Britain through a comprehensive investigation of the political and intellectual context in which it was born. One of the book's most original contributions is to offer an alternative genealogy of global theorizing and global consciousness emerging directly from the paradoxes and possibilities born of the imperial experience."--Karuna Mantena, Yale University
"Co-Winner of the 2007 Whitfield Prize"
"[A] highly intelligent and persuasive book. . . . Bell has written what seems likely to be one of the field's definitive works."---Eliga H. Gould, International History Review
"It is difficult to enumerate the qualities of this wonderful account of late Victorian political thought on state, Empire and much besides. Duncan Bell has given us a fresh and invigorating look at the political debate in the late 19th-century British Empire, but he has also given us plenty of food for thought about our own times. Perhaps the most intriguing thing about this book is the way that it strikes contemporary notes, without ever being a-historical in its content or approach."---Andrew Williams, Round Table
"The Idea of Greater Britain is full of penetrating insights for those seeking to understand the nuances of Victorian notions of British Empire and how these quests relate to the future of world order."---Shih-Yu Chou, Political Studies Review
"In a work of great subtlety and nuance he provides a fresh perspective on an important but neglected debate. In doing so he contributes signi?cantly not only to British imperial and domestic history but also to a deeper understanding of British political thinking in the late nineteenth century. It will be difficult in the future for historians of British political thought to ignore the imperial dimension."---John Kendle, American Historical Review
About the Author:
Duncan Bell is a university lecturer in international relations at the Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge, and a fellow of Christ's College. He is the editor of "Memory, Trauma, and World Politics" and "Victorian Visions of Global Order"
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.