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INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY IN VICTORIAN POLITICAL THOUGHT: T. H. GREEN, HERBERT SPENCER, AND HENRY SIDGWICK

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 August 2006

DUNCAN BELL  and
CASPER SYLVEST
DUNCAN BELL
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
CASPER SYLVEST
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Abstract

In the second half of the nineteenth century, British liberal ideology contained an open-ended vision of international order. The vision usually included a notion of an incipient or immanent international society composed of civilized nations. The fundamental distinction between civilized and barbarian nations meant that while this perceived society was international, in no sense was it global. In this essay we outline some of the broader characteristics of the internationalist outlook that many liberals shared and specifically discuss the claims about international society that they articulated. Liberal internationalism was a broad church and many (but not all) of its fundamental assumptions about the nature and direction of international progress and the importance of civilization were shared by large swathes of the intellectual elite. These assumptions are analysed by exploring the conceptions of international society found in three of the most influential thinkers of the time, T. H. Green, Herbert Spencer and Henry Sidgwick. Finally, the essay turns to the limitations of this vision of international society, especially in the context of the role of empire.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , August 2006 , pp. 207 - 238
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This paper was presented originally at a conference on competing visions of “international community” during the twentieth century held at the Center for International History, Columbia University, in April 2005. We would like to thank the participants at the conference, and in particular the organizer, Mark Mazower, as well as Anders Stephanson, Martti Koskenniemi, and Saul Dubow, for their insightful comments. We are also very grateful for the written comments later provided by Colin Tyler, Charles Jones, Jon Parry, Jens Bartelson, Nicholas Phillipson, and the anonymous referees for this journal. All the usual disclaimers apply.