The celebrated lectures on Colonial and Indo-British history delivered by Seeley at Cambridge in 1881-1882 played a vital role in shaping the culture of liberal imperialism. His ability to employ the language of ‘scientific’ historiography in order to confer legitimacy to empire-building and colonial rule was an integral part of this achievement. Seeley shifted the focus of the Rankean paradigm onto the power-struggles between the Atlantic States, explaining the expansion of England in terms of globalization of the European international system. But he superimposed above this realist conceptual model a philosophy of history derived from the Protestant latitudinarian tradition, and described British colonization and encounters with non-Europeans as operational forms of an integrated process of unification of the world into a Westernized global polity, articulated in national «provinces of humanity». Grounded on these universalist metahistorical premises, Seeley’s historiographical account of the British domination in India provided the Raj with a justification which diverged from the most derogatory forms of stereotypization of the Other and proved capable of exerting an unsuspected appeal on early Indian nationalist opinion.
Legitimizing Imperial Authority: Greater Britain and India in the Historical Vision of John R. Seeley / Tagliaferri, Teodoro. - In: STORIA DELLA STORIOGRAFIA. - ISSN 0392-8926. - 61:1(2012), pp. 75-91.
Legitimizing Imperial Authority: Greater Britain and India in the Historical Vision of John R. Seeley
TAGLIAFERRI, TEODORO
2012
Abstract
The celebrated lectures on Colonial and Indo-British history delivered by Seeley at Cambridge in 1881-1882 played a vital role in shaping the culture of liberal imperialism. His ability to employ the language of ‘scientific’ historiography in order to confer legitimacy to empire-building and colonial rule was an integral part of this achievement. Seeley shifted the focus of the Rankean paradigm onto the power-struggles between the Atlantic States, explaining the expansion of England in terms of globalization of the European international system. But he superimposed above this realist conceptual model a philosophy of history derived from the Protestant latitudinarian tradition, and described British colonization and encounters with non-Europeans as operational forms of an integrated process of unification of the world into a Westernized global polity, articulated in national «provinces of humanity». Grounded on these universalist metahistorical premises, Seeley’s historiographical account of the British domination in India provided the Raj with a justification which diverged from the most derogatory forms of stereotypization of the Other and proved capable of exerting an unsuspected appeal on early Indian nationalist opinion.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.