Socialized Imperialism: Leonard Woolf and the Legacy of Empire in British Public Life,1914--1945.
详细信息
- 作者：Reader ; Luke James.
- 学历：Ph.D.
- 年：2013
- 导师：Haynes, Douglas,eadvisorMitchell, Lauraecommittee memberMoeller, Robertecommittee member
- 毕业院校：University of California
- Department：History - Ph.D
- ISBN：9781303151682
- CBH：3565431
- Country：USA
- 语种：English
- FileSize：2311171
- Pages：381
文摘
This dissertation studies the writings of Leonard Woolf 1880-1969), an English essayist, Labour party official, and former colonial administrator, examining his work for the Labour Party Advisory Committee on Imperial Questions between 1918 and 1945, his writings on colonialism for the New Statesman and the Political Quarterly, and his radio broadcasts for the BBC. Woolf intended to outline a series of reforms that would lead to economic development and self-government in Britains colonies. In this dissertation, I suggest that the questions Woolf asked of imperialism remained bound up in the discursive and rhetorical constraints of empire. His writing shows how reformers operated in an intellectual and institutional environment formed by empire. Despite his criticism of economic motives for imperialism, Woolf also laid open the potential for using empire as a vehicle for metropolitan improvement, by defining the moral virtue of the nation through its treatment of its colonial possessions. The first chapter of this dissertation considers the category of economic imperialism, connecting it to arguments of modernity that considered metropolitan social reform incomplete unless capitalist exploitation of Britains colonies was ended as well. The second chapter studies conceptions of difference at work in Woolfs discussions of imperialism, discussing the ways in which they drew upon traditionally liberal perceptions of historical progress, thereby justifying imperial intervention and providing an analytical mode through which to improve Labour Party policy. In the third chapter, I consider the ways in which the advisory committee used its knowledge of colonial space to conceive of new partnerships between colony and metropole. Their consequence was to reconfigure imperial relationships. The fourth chapter discusses the way in which Woolf grew to conceive of international administration of colonial territory as an instrument through which to resolve tensions between European nations. In the final chapter, I consider ideas such ideas as "spiritual civilization," and "standards of value," in Woolfs talks on the BBC radio and his writings on broadcasting and book publishing. Throughout, I study Woolf through three different lenses: imperial reformer, public intellectual, and liberal thinker, suggesting that each was deeply interwoven and informed much of his writing.