Machine generated contents note: pt. ONE STRATEGIES OF ANTIQUITY -- 1.Alfred Zimmern's "Oxford Paradox": Displacement and Athenian Nostalgia -- 2.Falling in Love with Athens: Donald Kagan on America and Thucydides's Revisionism -- pt. TWO METANARRATIVE STRATEGIES -- 3.The Round Table's Story of Commonwealth -- 4.The Empire Whisperer: Niall Ferguson's Misdirection, Disavowal, and the Perilousness of Neoliberal Time -- pt. THREE STRATEGIES OF CHARACTER -- 5.Empire's Handyman: Jan Smuts and the Politics of International Holism -- 6.Michael Ignatieff's Tragedy: Just As We Are, Here and Now.
Summary
For over two centuries, liberal apologists for empire in Britain and America have been plagued by the contradictions between political liberalism and the exclusive, anti-democratic, and violent practices of imperialism - contradictions that become particularly obvious during periods of perceived imperial crisis. This book interrogates the complicated rhetoric of several pro-imperial, public intellectuals from both the late British Empire and contemporary America, two eras marked by intense anxiety about decline.