Fukuzawa, Liberalism, and the Imperial Temptation
In: Comparative Political TheorySearch for other papers by Kei Hiruta in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
This review essay juxtaposes Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Bourgeois Liberalism by Minhyuk Hwang with Progress, Pluralism, and Politics by David Williams, both published in 2020. Although the two books are motivated by different concerns and are likely to attract different audiences, I show that they can be read together to throw light on the complicated relationship between liberalism and empire from a comparative angle. On the one hand, I draw on Williams’s book and other recent works in the history of political thought to criticize some aspects of Hwang’s discussion of Fukuzawa. On the other hand, I draw on Hwang’s book and other studies on Fukuzawa to tease out the implications of Williams’s book for an important issue that has been marginalized in the recent Anglophone scholarship on liberalism and empire: the imperial temptation for non-Western liberals.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Arendt, H. (1953). Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government. The Review of Politics 15(3), pp. 303–327.
-
Bell, D. (2007). The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
-
Bell, D. (2016). Reordering the World: Essays on Liberalism and Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
-
Blacker, C. (1964). The Japanese Enlightenment: A Study of the Writings of Fukuzawa Yukichi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Craig, A. M. (2009). Civilization and Enlightenment: The Early Thought of Fukuzawa Yukichi. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
-
Freeden, M. (2005). Liberal Languages: Ideological Imaginations and Twentieth-Century Progressive Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
-
Freeden, M. (2015). Liberalism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Fukuzawa, Y. (1970). Nisshin no sensō wa bunya no sensō nari [The War between Japan and China Is a War between Civilization and Barbarism]. In: Keiō Gijuku, ed., Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū [The Complete Works of Fukuzawa Yukichi], Volume 14, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, pp. 491–492. (Original work published 1894).
-
Gleason, A. (1995). Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press.
-
Hopper, H. M. (2005). Fukuzawa Yukichi: From Samurai to Capitalist. New York: Pearson.
-
Hwang, M. (2020). Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Bourgeois Liberalism: The Betrayal of the East Asian Enlightenment. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
-
Ince, O. U. (2018). Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of Liberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Mehta, U. S. (1999). Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
-
Narsimhan, S. (1999). Japanese Perceptions of China in the Nineteenth Century: Influence of Fukuzawa Yukichi. New Delhi: Phoenix Publishing House.
-
Pitts, J. (2006). A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
-
Rosenblatt, H. (2018). The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
-
Skinner, Q. (1997). Liberty before Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Skinner, Q. (2009). A Genealogy of the Modern State. Proceedings of the British Academy 162, pp. 325–370.
-
Williams, D. (2020). Progress, Pluralism, and Politics: Liberalism and Colonialism, Past and Present. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Fukuzawa, Liberalism, and the Imperial Temptation
In: Comparative Political TheorySearch for other papers by Kei Hiruta in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This review essay juxtaposes Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Bourgeois Liberalism by Minhyuk Hwang with Progress, Pluralism, and Politics by David Williams, both published in 2020. Although the two books are motivated by different concerns and are likely to attract different audiences, I show that they can be read together to throw light on the complicated relationship between liberalism and empire from a comparative angle. On the one hand, I draw on Williams’s book and other recent works in the history of political thought to criticize some aspects of Hwang’s discussion of Fukuzawa. On the other hand, I draw on Hwang’s book and other studies on Fukuzawa to tease out the implications of Williams’s book for an important issue that has been marginalized in the recent Anglophone scholarship on liberalism and empire: the imperial temptation for non-Western liberals.
