Introduction
Introduction
Liberalism and Empire in a New Key
This chapter outlines the research question, the argument, and the interventions of the book. It presents the book’s objective of “rematerializing” the relationship between liberalism and empire by disclosing the mediation of that relationship by capitalism. It defines the book’s central theoretical problematic as the tension between the liberal conception of capitalism in metropolitan political economy and the coercive capitalist transformations and structures in the colonies. It clarifies the specific usages of key terms, such as “colonial capitalism,” “primal norms of liberalism,” and “disavowal,” and explains the reasons for focusing on John Locke and property in America, Edmund Burke and trade in India, and Edward Gibbon Wakefield and labor in Australasia. Following an overview of the structure of the book, the chapter concludes by summarizing the contribution of the framework of colonial capitalism to the study of liberal ideas.
Keywords: capitalism, colonialism, liberalism, empire, political theory, political economy
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