Liberal International Theory Eurocentric Hall Hobson 2010

International Theory (2010), 2:2, 210–245 & European Consortium for Political Research, 2010
doi:10.1017/S1752971909990261
Liberal International theory: Eurocentric

but not always Imperialist?
1 2
MARTIN HALL * and JOHN M. HOBSON
1
Department of Political Science, PO Box 52, Lund University, 221 00 Lund, Sweden
2
Department of Politics, University of Sheffield, Elmfield, Northumberland Road, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK
This article has two core objectives: first to challenge the conventional
understanding of liberal international theory (which we do by focussing specifically
on classical liberalism) and second, to develop much further postcolonialism’s
conception of Eurocentrism. These twin objectives come together insofar as we
argue that classical liberalism does not always stand for anti-imperialism/non-
interventionism given that significant parts of it were Eurocentric and pro-
imperialist. But we also argue that in those cases where liberals rejected
imperialism they did so not out of a commitment to cultural pluralism, as we are
conventionally told, but as a function of either a specific Eurocentric or a scientific
racist stance. This, in turn, means that Eurocentrism can be reduced neither to
scientific racism nor to imperialism. Thus while we draw on postcolonialism and
its critique of liberalism as Eurocentric, we find its conception of Eurocentrism
(and hence its vision of liberalism) to be overly reductive. Instead we differentiate
four variants of ‘polymorphous Eurocentrism’ while revealing how two of these
rejected imperialism and two supported it. And by revealing how classical
liberalism was embedded within these variants of Eurocentrism so we recast the
conventional interpretation. In doing so, we bring to light the ‘protean career of
polymorphous liberalism’ as it crystallizes in either imperialist or anti-imperialist
forms as a function of the different variants of Eurocentrism within which it is
embedded. Finally, because two of these variants underpin modern liberalism
(as discussed in the Conclusions) so we challenge international relations scholars to
rethink their conventional understanding of both classical- and modern-liberalism,
as much as we challenge postcolonialists to rethink their conception of Eurocentrism.
Keywords: liberalism; postcolonialism; Eurocentrism/Orientalism;

racism; imperialism/anti-imperialism; interventionism/non-
interventionism
International Relations (IR) scholars conventionally perceive – often as an

article of received wisdom – that liberal international theory stands for inter-
state cooperation, peaceful interdependence, national self-determination and,
* E-mails: Martin.Hall@svet.lu.se, j.m.hobson@shef.ac.uk
210
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Eurocentrism and liberal international theory 211
above all, a non-interventionist anti-imperialist posture, all of which stems

from an essential liberal commitment to cultural pluralism. In this article we
challenge this standard view by revealing the imperialist and anti-imperialist
faces of liberalism. Moreover, rather than assume that the anti-imperialist
face emanates from a pure liberal essence and the imperialist strand from a
contingent, ad hoc illiberal influence, we argue that these two political faces
derive from a consistent commitment to Eurocentrism and cultural monism.
While the emphasis on the Eurocentric foundations of liberalism is clearly
reminiscent of postcolonial critiques, nevertheless we make two revisions to
postcolonialism. First, we argue that liberalism and Eurocentrism can be
imperialist or anti-imperialist. That is, the relationship between Eurocentr-
ism and empire is much more contingent than postcolonialists have recog-
nized. Second, and inter-relatedly, we seek to go beyond the monochromatic
or reductive postcolonial conception of Eurocentrism, specifying not one
but four variants that existed in the c. 1760–1914 period.
We choose this period to rethink liberalism in general by honing in on
classical liberalism as an illustrative example. Thus because the figures we
focus upon – including Kant, Smith and Cobden – form the bases of
various modern liberal IR theories such as cosmopolitanism/democratic
peace theory, interdependence theory, liberal internationalism/liberal
globalization theory, so a detailed analysis of classical liberalism neces-
sarily has ramifications for our understanding of modern liberalism. More
specifically in the Conclusions we note how two of the Eurocentric var-
iants discussed in this article continue to underpin liberalism today,
thereby revealing post-1989 liberalism as a move back to the future of late
eighteenth and nineteenth century Eurocentric liberalism. Accordingly,
this article seeks to do much more than simply ‘fill in’ the missing details
of the historiography of liberalism, even though we also seek to contribute
to the revisionist historiography of IR that has been pioneered by the likes
of Brian Schmidt (1998: esp. Ch. 4), Long and Schmidt (2005), and
Robert Vitalis (2000, 2005, 2008).
Overall, our key claim is that revealing liberalism to be grounded in a
number of variants of Eurocentrism necessarily yields a unique view that
challenges IR scholars in general to rethink entirely their conventional
understanding of liberalism, as much as it challenges postcolonialists to
rethink their understanding of Eurocentrism. Nevertheless, it is important
to acknowledge that not all ‘non-postcolonial’ IR scholars adhere to this
conventional reading, with some recognizing liberalism as having the two
faces that we reveal in this article (e.g. Waltz, 1959: 95–123; Doyle,
1983b: esp. 324–337; Doyle, 1986: Ch. 11).
Specifically, we reveal liberalism as a promiscuous/polymorphous
theory, crystallizing in radically different forms over time in line with the
212 MARTIN HALL AND JOHN M. HOBSON
changing discourses of Eurocentrism within which it is embedded. Of

course, the conventional view of liberalism within IR is precisely that it is
a changing discourse with a long lineage. Indeed, the typical textbook
discussion seeks to describe liberalism precisely by tracing its lineages,
beginning with classical liberal internationalism (c. 1760–1914), pro-
gressing onto new liberalism and classical liberal institutionalism
(c. 1919–1970), before proceeding to cosmopolitanism via interdependence
theory and neoliberal institutionalism (c. 1970–2010). But, we argue, this
conventional vision of liberalism’s variants rests on a thin reading,
revealing only surface type differences in form rather than substance,
given that all of them rest on a shared commitment to individualism,
interdependence, anti-imperialism/self-determination, and cultural plur-
alism. That is, peace and inter-state cooperation can be achieved either
through national laissez-faire (classical liberal internationalism) or
through international institutional forms of intervention (new liberalism,
liberal/neoliberal institutionalism, and global cosmopolitanism). Thus the
end always remains the same, with differences apparent only in terms of
the prescribed means to achieve them.
Our alternative narrative of the protean career of liberalism is a much
thicker one, revealing radically different approaches wherein each is
founded on a specific Eurocentric/Orientalist base that in turn yields
either an imperialist or anti-imperialist vision. It is for this reason that we
characterize the received understanding of liberalism as inherently
monochromatic, as much as we see postcolonialism’s interpretation of
Eurocentrism as overly monolithic and reductive. Relating the entwined
protean careers of polymorphous Eurocentrism and liberalism constitutes
the core of this article. More specifically, we argue that classical liberalism
was grounded in four variants of Eurocentrism, two of which were
imperialist and two anti-imperialist – though in the interests of space we
shall reveal three of these here. While adding the fourth Eurocentric
dimension of liberalism would enhance our case, nevertheless we believe
that we can establish our claim sufficiently by revealing three of the four
Eurocentric bases of classical liberalism (but for the fourth dimension see
Hobson, 2009: Ch. 4).
Finally, we introduce and engage with two related literatures that have
not been sufficiently taken on board by mainstream IR understandings
of liberalism. These comprise postcolonialism and its representation of
liberalism as a form of Eurocentric/racist imperialism and, in turn, the
response to this as articulated most forcefully by Sankar Muthu and
Jennifer Pitts. They argue that some of the key liberal Enlightenment
figures were anti-imperialist and culturally pluralist, though they concede
that by the mid-nineteenth century classical liberalism had congealed
within a Eurocentric imperialist mould. Engaging critically as well as

sympathetically with these two literatures enables us to carve out our own
alternative understanding of liberalism that goes beyond the standoff that
currently exists between them.
The article proceeds in five stages. Section one relates the monochro-
matic reading of Eurocentrism within postcolonial IR before proceeding
to examine how this reading underpins the postcolonial-inspired critiques
of classical liberalism. The second section then presents our own re-
reading of Eurocentrism by outlining the four key variants that existed
during the era of classical liberalism (c. 1760–1914), while the remaining
three sections deal in turn with three of the Eurocentric/Orientalist var-
iants of classical liberalism.
Problematizing Eurocentrism and the postcolonial critique of

classical liberalism
In the wake of the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) post-
colonialism emerged, claiming that Western Social Science is Orientalist/
Eurocentric/racist and is, therefore, inherently imperialist. It is precisely this
conflation of Eurocentrism with racism as well as Eurocentric racism with
imperialism that marks the monochromatic or reductive interpretation of
Eurocentrism (though a tiny minority of postcolonialists have registered
dissatisfaction with this monolithic reading – for example Moore-Gilbert,
1997: Ch. 2). Having begun in cultural studies, postcolonialism’s and non-
Eurocentrism’s critique of Eurocentrism entered the discipline of IR in the
late-1990s (e.g. Doty, 1996; Grovogui, 1996; Paolini, 1999; Barkawi and
Laffey, 2002; Chowdhry and Nair, 2002; Ling, 2002; Inayatullah and
Blaney, 2004; Gruffydd-Jones, 2006a).1 Many postcolonial-inspired IR
scholars seek to reveal how IR – in its theoretical and empirical gaze – is
Eurocentric/racist, such that it naturalizes and obscures the imperial
dimension of world politics, past, and present. Thus, it is usually assumed
that the antidote to Eurocentric IR is to reveal or resuscitate this sublimated
racist-imperial dimension. As one authority summarizes it, a key step
toward decolonizing knowledge isy to reveal the imperial and racia-
lized constitution of international relations. This entails moving
imperialism from its bracketed location in specialist studies and the
1
Note that not all scholars who are critical of Eurocentrism are postcolonial but embrace a
more generic ‘non-Eurocentrism’ insofar as they do not subscribe to all aspects of the post-
modern base of postcolonialism (cf. Paolini, 1999; Jahn, 2000; Barkawi and Laffey, 2002;
Hobson, 2004; Gruffydd-Jones, 2006b).
distant chronological past and demonstrating the unbroken centrality of

imperialism to international relations from the fifteenth century to the
twenty-first (Gruffydd-Jones, 2006b: 9).
How does all this relate to the postcolonial-inspired/non-Eurocentric

critique of classical liberalism? Despite the many inroads that postcolonial/
non-Eurocentric IR scholars have made, the fact remains that with a few
notable exceptions (e.g. Grovogui, 1996; Jahn, 2000, 2005, 2006; Inaya-
tullah and Blaney, 2004; Anghie, 2005; Bowden, 2009), the majority of
such critiques of classical liberalism are made by ‘non-Eurocentric’ and
postcolonial-inspired political theorists who include Tully (1995), Parekh
(1997), Pagden (1998), Tuck (1999), Hindess (2001), Pateman and Mills
(2007) and, most prominently of all, Uday Singh Mehta (1999). In essence,
this critique of classical liberalism seeks to reveal its Eurocentric/racist
nature in order to uncover its imperialist/colonialist normative stance.
Typical of this genre is the claim that Mehta makes: that what at first sight
appears to be a contradiction, whereby the nineteenth century witnessed
the triumph of Western liberalism at the very time that British imperialism
expanded, turns out to be entirely consistent given his belief that liber-
alism’s Eurocentrism renders it inherently colonialist. Paraphrasing E.P.
Thompson, he asks rhetorically: ‘how did ideas of equality, liberty and
fraternity lead to empire, liberticide and fratricide?’ (Mehta, 1999: 190).
The answer is that liberalism’s commitment to Eurocentrism/paternalism
necessitates a colonialist posture (Mehta, 1999: esp. 190–201). How,
then, does this play out?
The argument of Mehta and others begins with the claim that while
liberalism stands for democracy, human rights, a tolerant cultural plur-
alism, and non-intervention/self-determination based on the belief that
these are universal norms or principles, nevertheless it turns out that for
Eurocentric liberalism these apply only to particular societies where
individuals allegedly attain full rationality (i.e. in civilized Europe).
Accordingly, these principles cannot apply to non-European polities/
societies given that they comprise irrational individuals and institutions.
This means first, that within the Eurocentric liberal vision these societies
would inevitably stagnate under barbarism/savagery as they were unable
to self-generate and second, that the principles of sovereign recognition
and national self-determination/non-interventionism could legitimately
apply only to relations between civilized (i.e. European) states given that
non-European polities were deemed to be irrational and hence unciv-
ilized. Importantly, this latter point is symptomatic of what we shall call a
‘schizophrenic/bipolar’ conception of the international, wherein European/
non-European relations are characterized by imperial interventionism while
intra-European state relations are marked by the principles of mutual

recognition and non-interventionism. This denial of sovereignty to non-
European polities is, however, not an illiberal moment but is entirely
consistent with a liberal paternalist-Eurocentrism since only through
Western imperial interventionism (or the ‘civilizing mission’) could the
‘irrational East’ be ‘rescued’ or ‘uplifted’ through the delivery of rational
Western institutions. The final effect would be the universalization of
the West into the global ‘empire of uniformity’ (Tully, 1995), as non-
European societies and polities are transformed into rational/civilized
Western entities to the benefit of all peoples.
This is reinforced, postcolonialist-inspired writers argue, by classical
liberalism’s emphasis on the ‘social efficiency’ argument, which asserts
that where peoples fail to develop their lands productively so these ter-
ritories are proclaimed to be terra nullius (i.e. vacant- or waste-space). In
such conditions liberalism prescribes that Europeans have the right to
take-over their lands and develop them in the allegedly productive
interests of global humanity. This argument is traced back to Vitoria,2 and
then forwards via Gentili, Grotius, Locke, Vattel, and Kant (e.g. Tully,
1995; Grovogui, 1996; Tuck, 1999; Pateman and Mills, 2007; Bowden,
2009).
All in all, the postcolonial-inspired critique posits an indissoluble
relationship between Eurocentric classical liberalism and empire, thereby
reflecting the monochromatic reading of Eurocentrism. While there is
much in this argument that we draw on, nevertheless the problem is that if
we were to follow this reductive logic then we would be forced to squeeze
all liberal international theory into a single Eurocentric/racist imperialist
mould thereby obscuring the different Eurocentric variants that underpin
liberalism and which, in turn, generate its dual-faced imperialist and anti-
imperialist visions. It therefore makes sense to proceed to outline the four
variants of Eurocentrism that existed in the c. 1760–1914 period before
turning to our reinterpretation of classical liberalism.
Outlining four variants of Eurocentrism

In this section we unpack the monolithic reading of Eurocentrism to
unearth its two generic variants that existed in the c. 1760–1914 period –
‘Eurocentric institutionalism’ and ‘scientific racism’. Given that each
genre contains two sub-sets, imperialist and anti-imperialist, so we derive
a 2 3 2 matrix (see Table 1). These four variants have been obscured by
2
Though the idea was first mooted in Thomas More’s, Utopia (Tuck, 1999: 49).
Table 1. Taxonomy of the different ideal-typical forms of Eurocentrism/

Orientalism racism their relations to imperialism
Pro-imperialist Anti-imperialist
Eurocentric A Paternalism B Anti-paternalism

Institutionalism While all societies are capable of While all societies are capable of self-
self-development, only the West development, only the West has
has reached civilization via its reached civilization (though not
rational institutions. The necessarily in its final perfect form)
irrational non-European via its rational institutions. The non-
institutions block development, European societies, though on a
which can only be unblocked, lower barbaric or savage rung, will
and development kick-started, by naturally self-evolve in time to reach
the Western paternalist civilizing the idealized Western terminus of
mission. civilization, thereby negating the
need for a Western paternalist
civilizing mission.
Scientific racism C Offensive scientific racism D Defensive scientific racism

The white race is genetically the Race development is based partly on
fittest and white civilization the genetic and partly culture/social
most culturally adaptive. function. The universalist strand
Although the non-white races are argues that in the long run all non-
incapable of autonomously white societies will evolve naturally/
reaching civilization, they are spontaneously into the idealized
nevertheless viewed as posing a form of Western civilization (e.g.
threat to the white races. Thus Sumner, Spencer), negating the need
the white races must colonize and for a civilizing mission. The relativist
defeat the yellow and black races strand views non-white races as
in order to preserve civilization irredeemably backward such that a
and white supremacy. However, civilizing mission would be
some believed that the non-white unproductive (e.g. Blair, Jordan). All
societies could benefit from a agree that racial inter-breeding
Western civilizing mission and be (miscegenation) and tropical climate
uplifted into civilization (e.g. lead to the degeneration of the white
Reinsch, Wilson). race/Western civilization and a
regression/containment of non-white
societies, thereby negating the
rationale for colonialism.
the headlining postcolonial umbrella term of Orientalism/Eurocentrism,

which in turn presents a single imperialist discourse that obscures not only
the anti-imperialist variants but also smooths the imperialist variants into a
coherent seamless whole. And to the extent that postcolonial-inspired
scholars on occasion implicitly recognize different variants – paternalist-
Eurocentrism (e.g. Mill) and social Darwinism (e.g. Spencer) – nevertheless
they tend to see the latter as but a more extreme imperialist expression of
the former. As we shall see shortly, however, scientific racism – of which
social Darwinism was only one strand – could be anti-imperialist (e.g.
Spencer) as well as imperialist (e.g. Ward).
We begin by considering ‘Eurocentric institutionalism’, which emerged
forcefully during the Enlightenment – even if its latent principles emerged
initially after the ‘discovery’ of America (Tully, 1995; Pagden, 1998; Jahn,
2000; Inayatullah and Blaney, 2004; Anghie, 2005; Bowden, 2009). The
postcolonial position is that Enlightenment Eurocentrism was inherently
imperialist and for some such scholars there was little real difference
between it and scientific racism. Certainly, this generic approach con-
ceived a world hierarchy that placed civilized white society at the top,
yellow barbarian societies down a stage and black/red savages societies
at the bottom of the global hierarchy. But critically, this ethnography was
based purely on institutional/cultural, rather than biological/genetic dif-
ferences. Moreover, Enlightenment Eurocentric institutionalists believed
that all humans and all societies had recourse to universal reason and that
all were capable of progressing from savagery/barbarism into civilization.
However, Western societies were deemed superior and more advanced
because they had full recourse to reason, whereas reason was only latent
within non-Western societies. Thus the West is thought to have developed
rational institutions and norms: rational (Weberian) bureaucracies and
rational liberal-democratic states, rational individualism, rational science
and religion etc. Overall, such a framework presupposes a full separation
of the private and public realms. By contrast, non-European societies are
thought to be governed only by irrational norms and institutions, where
the private and public realms are thoroughly confused. They are char-
acterized by collectivist social structures, regressive/mystical religions as
well as either patrimonial bureaucracies/barbaric Oriental despotic states
(yellow societies) or a savage state of nature (red and black societies).
This, in turn, gives rise to the familiar binary, logocentric distinctions that
privilege the West over East: democracy/despotism or state/state of nat-
ure, individualism/collectivism, science/mysticism, etc.
However, at this point we encounter two sub-divisions; a strong and a
weak version. The strong version, found in the paternalist wing, believes
that latent reason in non-Western societies could be brought to full reali-
zation but only through the imperial intervention of Western societies (e.g.
Mill, Cobden, Hobson, and Angell). That is, the ‘civilizing mission’ would
act as a ‘signal trigger’ or ‘catalytic impulse’, launching the East onto the
track, or high tide, of progress towards civilization by delivering rational
Western norms/institutions. This variant presupposes a paternalist West and
a feminized/infantilized East that needs rescuing. That is, it is the paternalist
side of the West that leads it to embark on the civilizing mission or ‘the
white man’s burden’ in order to emancipate the helpless East.
This paternalist imperial variant is differentiated from the weak version
found in the anti-paternalist wing, which asserts that non-European
peoples would evolve naturally and spontaneously into civilization,
thereby dispensing with the need to civilize them through imperialism
(e.g. Smith and Kant). Moreover, the anti-paternalist variant was highly
critical of Western imperialism and saw it as a hindrance, rather than a
spur, to non-European progress (as well as to Western development).
Nevertheless, both positions embraced Eurocentrism. For the paternalists
awarded the West the status of sole agent or subject of global progress
while the East was marginalized as the passive object/beneficiary of
Western largesse. And the anti-paternalists assumed that the non-Eur-
opean peoples were destined to follow not only a path into modern
civilization which had been achieved though not yet perfected by the
West, but one that would and should culminate in an idealized Western
civilizational terminus.
The postcolonial conflation of Eurocentric institutionalism and scientific
racism is problematic because while there are certain, albeit highly complex,
overlaps there are also some key differences. It is important to recognize that
scientific racism is a considerably more complex body of thought than is
Eurocentric institutionalism and categorizing it is not straightforward. The
key body of thought of relevance here is that of social Darwinism (often
infused with Lamarckianism) and, though less prominently at that time,
Eugenics. While racial/biological properties are important in this ethnology,
nevertheless the Lamarckian influence – which often goes unnoticed – also
infused culture and social behavior into the mix. Here we differentiate two
ideal-type streams of scientific racism – what we call ‘defensive’ and
‘offensive’ scientific racism – and we shall discuss each in turn.
The defensive variant draws on a variety of discourses that were
blended together in a number of ways. A key body of thinkers drew on
laissez-faire social Darwinism that was often blended with Lamarckian-
ism (e.g. Spencer and Sumner). This invokes a progressive historical
universalistic evolutionary framework that echoes the liberal anti-
paternalist Eurocentrism of Kant and Smith. These thinkers developed a
rigorous theory of the minimalist state on the grounds that societies
operate according to the evolutionary laws of natural selection. Thus to
interfere in these in any way would produce only negative outcomes. This
was, in effect, an extreme form of Smithian political economy. A further
inter-related similarity with Smith and Kant lay in the belief that societies
of all kinds will naturally evolve in time from savagery to barbarism and
finally to civilization so long as they are free of political interference,
either domestically or externally. Accordingly, this means that it is

pointless to engage in an imperial civilizing mission since this would only
disturb the natural and autonomous laws of evolution and development.
Thus both parts of the framework came together in the anti-imperialist
posture, insofar as imperialism would burden the state and undermine
progress within the civilized countries on the one hand – what Herbert
Spencer (1902) called the ‘rebarbarization of civilization’ – while simul-
taneously leading to the regression or containment of colonial societies on
the other. The laissez-faire social Darwinists such as Spencer and Sumner
also emphasized the twin threats that miscegenation and tropical climate
posed for the white races, the effects of both leading to the inevitable
degeneration of the white race and of civilization more generally.
It is also important to note that Herbert Spencer, who is typically
treated as a founding voice of social Darwinism, was also a leading neo-
Lamarckian (Stocking, 1982). This is significant because Lamarckianism
places equal weighting on culture/social behavior and genetics, insofar as
the social function of individuals (or animals) necessarily modifies their
physiognomy and mental processes or characteristics, which are then
passed on through the blood to the subsequent generation. Thus, for
example, just as a workman through manual labor develops large and
strong hands that then become an acquired hereditary characteristic of his
son, so giraffes have long necks because their predecessors had to reach up
for their food. This has two significant ramifications. First, it means that
many social Darwinists/Lamarckians did not elevate genetics above all
else; and second, it avoids the pessimistic assumption of extreme social
Darwinism and Eugenics, which assumed that non-white races were
simply incapable of auto-developing into civilization. Thus the splicing
together of laissez-faire social Darwinism and Lamarckianism enabled a
seemingly ‘progressive’ universalism insofar as it issued an anti-imperialist
posture and granted some developmental agency to the non-white races.
Another group of thinkers within this category created a relativistic
approach, viewing the non-European races and societies as inherently
backward and inferior such that they were unlikely to develop into civi-
lization (e.g. Blair and Jordan). But they agreed with the laissez-faire
social Darwinists insofar as miscegenation and white residence in tropical
climates must at all costs be avoided and that non-European societies
should be left alone to their own devices, free from white contact. Overall,
they sought to distance the West from the ‘contaminating’ influence of the
non-European races through what amounted to a strategy of ‘civiliza-
tional/racial-apartheid’. Accordingly, it was for this racist reason rather
than any inherent liberal commitment to ‘cultural pluralism’ that they
argued strongly against Western imperialism.
Table 2. Taxonomy of the ideal-typical relations of Eurocentrism/

scientific racism to imperialism in classical liberal international theory
Pro-imperialist Anti-imperialist
Eurocentric A Paternalists B Anti-Paternalists

Institutionalists Cobden, Angell, Mill, Hobson Kant, Smith
Scientific racists C Offensive racists D Defensive racists

Liberals: Ward, Reinsch, Wilson Spencer, Sumner, Blair,
Jordan
(Geopolitical realists: Mahan,
Mackinder)
The second generic variant, ‘offensive scientific racism’, could be found

principally in interventionist social Darwinism and Lamarckianism and,
though to a lesser extent at this time, in the ‘science’ of Eugenics. Notably,
however, these were blended together in different ways by different scholars,
leading to a complex range of positions. The interventionist social Dar-
winists explicitly rejected the laissez-faire variant of Spencerean social
Darwinism and denied the non-white races the capacity to auto-develop.
They argued that the white race must engage in race war and destructive/
exploitative imperialism – as in social liberalism (e.g. Ward, 1903/2002) and
geopolitical realism (e.g. Mahan, 1897; Mackinder, 1904). Alternatively
Lamarckian liberal racists embraced the idea of a Western civilizing mission
on the grounds that this could bring rationality and development to the non-
European societies (e.g. Wilson, 1902; Reinsch, 1905).
Thus, in sum, we differentiate two sub-categories of scientific racism
where the offensive variant advocates the colonization of the East in order
to maintain Western civilization or white supremacy, while the defensive
variant seeks to defend Western/white supremacy by avoiding contact
with the contaminating influence of the non-European races through
strong immigration controls and the avoidance of colonialism. All in all,
then, we identify four major positions that are contained within the
generic categories of scientific racism and Eurocentric institutionalism.
Nevertheless, we emphasize the point that these four positions should be
recognized as something of a simplification of what is an extremely
complex and often contradictory literature, even though we have allowed
for considerable nuances within each of the categories. The issue now
becomes that of ascertaining how these various discourses became
embodied within the writings of classical liberal international thinkers.
Table 2 provides the summary position and in what follows we take three
of these categories in turn (omitting Box C – ‘offensive scientific racism’)

in order to make our case.
Paternalist Eurocentric institutionalism: liberal imperialism (Box A)

This discourse emerged fully by the mid-nineteenth century in the period
of the West’s triumphalist moment, perhaps no better illustrated than the
Great Exhibition held in Hyde Park, London (1851), through which
Britain proclaimed itself to be superior to the non-European world. This
context was crucial in shaping the paternalist/imperialist wing of Euro-
centric institutional universalism. Significantly, it is precisely this category
that postcolonial-inspired critics have in mind when they think of Euro-
centrism. Nevertheless, even within this particular variant we find a sig-
nificant range of positions. At one extreme lies John Stuart Mill, who
argued not only for the necessity of the civilizing mission but that it could
be achieved through despotic colonial government intervention (see
Doyle, 1983b: 331; Mehta, 1999; Jahn, 2005; Pitts, 2005: 133–162). At
the other extreme lies John A. Hobson, who argued that a civilizing
mission to develop the non-European societies was necessary but only
under the guidance/tutelage of an independent international institution –
specifically the League of Nations (Long, 2005; Hobson, 2009: Ch. 2).
And exactly the same argument/discourse was deployed by inter-war IR
liberals and progressives such as Alfred Zimmern, Norman Angell and
Leonard Woolf (Hobson, 2009: Ch. 7). The majority of paternalist lib-
erals in the pre-1914 era, however, occupied the middle ground, which
entailed individual Western countries civilizing the East through imperi-
alism. Here we shall take Richard Cobden as our example.
Richard Cobden: for ‘peaceful universal interdependence’ or

‘English nationalism and liberal imperialism’?
Cobden is, of course, best-known for his fervent promotion of free trade.
The conventional reading emphasizes his normative prescription of lais-
sez-faire at home and free trade abroad on the grounds that this would
promote peace, interdependence and international cooperation. More-
over, Cobden’s liberalism extended to his critique of the realist conception
of the balance of power on the grounds that its defense requires an
unacceptable pro-war posture. The secondary IR literature assumes that
his commitment to international non-interventionism and cultural plur-
alism, coupled with his passionate aversion to war, rendered him a natural
liberal critic of empire and all things colonial (e.g. Burchill, 1996: 35–37,
39–40). Indeed this is thought to be axiomatic given his classical liberal
critique of ‘big government’, where increased military expenditures

associated with imperialism lead to higher taxes and a higher national
debt, all of which serves to divert resources away from productive to
unproductive spending in the imperial country (as in Smith and Kant).
But, we argue that, while elements of this picture are undoubtedly
pertinent, the problem is that Cobden has been read out of the paternalist
Eurocentric context in which he wrote. Crucially, by revealing this we
show how it led him to advocate war and imperialism in certain contexts.
Cobden subscribed to a schizophrenic conception of the international,
which undermined or contradicted the tolerant cultural pluralism for
which he is famous. In revealing this alternative reading we draw from the
major two-volume set that brings together his letters and pamphlets
(Cobden, 1868). Certainly this is not to say that the arguments for which
he is famous are not included in them. For there we encounter all manner
of quotations that resonate with the conventional reading including the
British statesman’s idiom, that
‘Men of war to conquer colonies, to yield to us a monopoly of their

trade’ must now be dismissed, like many other glittering but false adages
of our forefathers, and in its place we must substitute the more homely
but enduring maxim – Cheapness, which will command commerce; and
whatever else is needful will follow in its train (1836/1868: 290, his
emphasis).
Nevertheless, what really stands out throughout these pamphlets is a pro-
imperial posture that rests on a paternalist Eurocentric institutionalist
base, which is in turn wrapped up within a fervent sense of English
nationalism. Indeed one does not have to scour the texts to unearth this
for it is sustained across no less than 443 pages out of a total of 991.
This pro-imperialist stance emerges in two key pamphlets that, inter
alia, discuss the future possibility of a Russian war with Turkey. Cobden’s
critique of the pro-war position of David Urquhart (former Secretary of
the English Embassy at Constantinople), who sought British support of
Turkey for fear that a stronger Russia could only enhance Russia’s hand
against Britain, is based not on pacifist non-interventionism but colonial
take-over of Turkey by Russia. Cobden’s Eurocentric response proceeds in
stages. First, he insists that Britain’s interests lie more with Russia than
Turkey not just because Britain’s trade with Russia vastly outweighs its
commerce with Turkey, but mainly because Russia is a civilized Christian
Western power while the Ottoman Empire is a barbaric Islamic Oriental
despotism. His Eurocentric analysis emphasizes the barbaric twin-effects
of the Turkish Oriental despotic state and its repressive Islamic religion, to
wit: although Turkey’s lands are highly fertile, nevertheless, ‘despotic
violence has triumphed over nature’ such that this country ‘has by the
oppressive exactions of successive pachas, become little better than a
deserted waste’ (1835/1868: 19). In essence, he argues that a once great
country has been reduced to a ‘desolate place of tombs’ by a rapacious
despotism given that it privileges war and militarism over peace and
commerce (1836/1868: 173–4).
He then engages in a thought experiment, asking what would happen if
the population of the United States was substituted for the Turkish people
and transplanted into Turkey. He responds by painting an image of the
ravaged hell of barbaric Turkey being transformed into an earthly civi-
lized paradise, on the grounds that the Americans would create a vibrant
commercial and prosperous economy. This then culminates in a full pro-
imperial posture. For not only does Cobden dismiss the claim that Rus-
sian acquisition of Turkey would harm British interests but, he argues:
On the contrary, we have no hesitation in avowing it as our deliberate
conviction that not merely Great Britain, but the entire civilized [i.e.
Western] world, will have reason to congratulate itself, the moment when
[Turkey] again falls beneath the sceptre of any other European power
whatever. Ages must elapse before its favoured region will become y the
seat and centre of commerce, civilization, and true religion; but the first
step towards this consummation must be to convert Constantinople again
into that which every lover of humanity and peace longs to behold it – the
capital of a Christian [civilized] people (1835/1868: 33).
Thus Cobden positively endorses a Russian colonial take-over of Turkey
on the grounds that this Western civilizing mission would yield con-
siderable benefits not just to Turkey but also to Europe and Britain in
particular (1835/1868: 34–37; 1836/1868: 189–91). Speaking of this
imperial mission of civilizing Turkey, he argues that it will
put into a peoples’ hands the bible in lieu of the Koran – let the religion
of Mohamet give place to that of Jesus Christ; and human reason, aided
by the printing press and the commerce of the world, will not fail to
erase the errors which time, barbarism, or the cunning of its priesthood,
may have engrafted upon it (1835/1868: 33–34).
This argument underpins his general claim that Turkish society was, in the
classic Eurocentric institutionalist position, ‘unchanging and stationary’
whereas Russian society was ‘progressing’ (1836/1868: 187–188).
Of course, if we left it here, we might conclude that Cobden was
prepared to countenance imperialism so long as it was undertaken by
Western countries other than England. Certainly his critique of British
imperialism that was articulated in his many speeches and letters would
seem to support this. But his discussion of Britain’s relations with Ireland
certainly qualify this view. In his 1835 pamphlet chapter on Ireland he

argues that the Irish are savages and that their Catholic form of perse-
cution has ‘enabled [Ireland] to resist, not only unscathed, but actually
with augmented power, the shock of a free press, and the liberalizing
influence of the freest constitutional government in Europe’ (1835/1868:
63). And the rest of the chapter is given over to an argument that advo-
cates an English colonial civilizing mission in Ireland that is wrapped up
within a fervent English nationalism. It is vital to ‘raise Ireland up’
through a civilizing mission, Cobden argues, for failure to do so ‘will
inevitably depress [England] to a level with [the Irish]’ (1835/1868: 69).
Precisely because Irish savage habits are contaminating England through
Irish immigration – a kind of ‘Irish Peril’ type-argument – so it is
imperative that Irish savagery be eradicated (see esp. 1835/1868: 70).
Cobden insists that a ‘[p]arliament in Dublin [self-determination] would
not remedy the ills of Ireland. That has been tried, and found unsuccessful;
for all may learn in her history, that a more corrupt, base, and selfish public
body than the domestic legislature of Ireland never existed’ (1835/1868: 82).
Thus it was to the English parliament that Ireland must look for salvation.
In particular, an English civilizing mission would entail building infra-
structure (e.g. roads and railroads) and the exporting of English capital and
civilization. ‘We confess we see no hope for the eventual prosperity [of
Ireland]y except [through]y the instrumentality of English capital, in the
pursuit of manufactures or commerce’ (1835/1868: 90). And Cobden con-
cludes that where England has gone wrong vis-à-vis the ‘problem of Ireland’
is not in colonizing it but in neglecting to submit Ireland to a full colonial
civilizing mission. Ultimately, however, it is the serving of the English
national interest that underpins his calling for colonialism, given his belief
that Ireland ‘remains to this hour an appalling monument of our neglect and
misgovernmenty The spectacle of Ireland operat[es] like a cancer in the
side of England’ (1835/1868: 95).
To close, it is possible that in pressing home his various political mes-
sages Cobden tended towards hyperbole. And one might suspect that his
constant appeals to the English national interest are at least made in part
to blunt the criticisms of him as a utopian idealist. Nevertheless, it seems
fair to conclude that much of Cobden’s writings are founded on a
paternalist, pro-imperialist Eurocentric institutionalism, which in turn
problematizes our conventional picture of him as a liberal internationalist
who is committed to pacifism, non-interventionism, cultural pluralism
and anti-imperialism. Even so, it might be objected that Cobden’s stance
towards Islam and Catholicism was an ad hoc illiberal argument that does
not reflect, or stem from, his general liberal credentials but emanates
rather from an ad hoc Protestant prejudice. But his criticism of these
countries (Turkey and Ireland) reflects a liberal predisposition wherein

those societies that were founded on irrational institutions – of which
religion was only one expression – did not qualify for self-determination
and could only do so once rational institutions had been set up courtesy of
a European imperial civilizing mission. Paternalist liberal prescriptions of
non-intervention and tolerance can only apply once ‘the Other’ has been
remoulded along rational European lines. Cobden, then, conforms perfectly
to the postcolonial reading of Eurocentrism, invoking a schizophrenic
conception of the international wherein Western double standards were
part and parcel of paternalist Eurocentric liberalism.
Anti-paternalist Eurocentric institutionalism: liberal

anti-imperialism (Box B)
For postcolonialists the discussion thus far will appear intuitive, given
that they conflate Eurocentrism with imperialism while associating clas-
sical liberalism with a Eurocentric-colonialist politics. But here we seek to
deepen our understanding of liberal Eurocentrism by revealing its two
anti-imperialist variants in turn, beginning with the anti-paternalist
Eurocentric institutionalist variant that rejects all forms of paternalism
and thus imperialism. Chronologically, this category emerged before the
paternalist strand reached its heights of expression, being located within the
late-eighteenth century Enlightenment. Its clearest representatives are
Immanuel Kant and Adam Smith. Unlike their paternalist cousins, they
adopted a universal cosmopolitanism – albeit one that was an expression of
a European particularism or provincialism – but in contrast to the post-
colonial critique of cosmopolitanism as inherently imperialist, Kant and
Smith articulated their theories in large part as a critique of imperialism.
Immanuel Kant: anti-paternalist Eurocentrism and the critique of

imperialism
To make our case we shall enter into a dialogue with Sankar Muthu’s
analysis of Kant in his pioneering book, Enlightenment Against Empire
(Muthu, 2003: Chs. 4–5). In essence, we shall agree with his anti-
imperialist reading but will present Kant as a Eurocentric ‘cultural
monist’ rather than as a tolerant ‘cultural pluralist’ as Muthu claims. In
doing so, we seek to reveal the key ingredients of anti-paternalist Euro-
centric institutionalism. We shall deal with Kant’s critique of imperialism
first and then proceed to reveal his particular brand of Eurocentrism. And
because we have to deal with both these dimensions so the discussion will
necessarily be extended.
As indicated earlier, many so-called liberal ‘critics’ of empire ended up

by embracing imperialism, often because they subscribed to the ‘social
efficiency/terra nullius’ argument. Indeed, it is here where James Tully’s
postcolonial-inspired argument intervenes, claiming that this imperialist
cue is endorsed by Kant in his third definitive article for a perpetual peace.
Tully claims that for Kant (as with Locke in particular), the Aboriginals
must be punished if they resist those Europeans who take their land, since
the latter have a right to hospitality and settlement in the formers’ lands
(Tully, 1995: 88–89). But in The Metaphysics of Morals Kant asserts
unequivocally that the right to establish community with such natives
‘does not, however, amount to the right to settle on another nation’s
territoryy for the latter would require a special contract’ (1970c: 172,
his emphasis). Moreover, he goes on to say that where Europeans seek to
settle on non-European lands occupied by shepherds or hunters ‘who rely
upon large tracts of wasteland for their sustenance, settlements should not
be established by violence, but only by treaty [i.e. indigenous consent];
and even then, there must be no attempt to exploit the ignorance of the
natives in persuading them to give up their territories’ (1970c: 173).
Significant too is that in Perpetual Peace, Kant approves of the Japanese
and Chinese practice of placing heavy restrictions on the entry of
European traders since the latter had failed to act peaceably and fairly
(1970b: 106–7). Ironically, Jacques Derrida (2000) reinforces our claim
here when he critiques Kant for precisely the opposite reason to that of
Tully: that Kant contradicts his own commitment to cosmopolitanism
precisely because of his insistence that visitors (specifically asylum-seekers
in today’s context) who seek to settle abroad can only do so once consent
has been given through the signing of a contract by the receiving society.
But equally, as one Kantian expert rightly notes, Derrida’s critique of
Kant’s arguments misunderstands the historical context, wherein Kant’s
major concern was to protect non-European peoples from marauding
European imperialists; hence the ‘laws of hospitality’ were framed very
much with the critique of imperialism in mind (Brown, 2009: 59–66).
Muthu, then, is surely correct to note that Kant’s conception of ‘cos-
mopolitan right’ is formulated precisely so as to critique imperialism
(Muthu, 2003: 187–8). As Kant put it, ‘[y]et these [European imperial]
visits to foreign shores and even more so, attempts to settle on them with
a view to linking them with the motherland, can also occasion evil and
violence in one part of the globe with ensuing repercussions which are
felt everywhere else’ (Kant, 1970c: 172; also Kant, 1970b: 107–8). In
Perpetual Peace Kant unequivocally condemns European imperialists for
offending this fundamental cosmopolitan right. In the discussion of the
third definitive article, which Tully sees as providing the imperialist cue,
Kant takes precisely the opposite stance by taking European imperialists

to task for their inhospitable conduct abroad, emphasizing the point that
the ‘injustice which they display in visiting foreign countries and peoples
(which in their case is the same as conquering them) seems appallingly
great’ (1970b: 106, his emphases). Combining this with a critique of the
social efficiency/terra nullius argument, Kant asserts on the same page
that ‘America, the negro countries, the Spice Islands, the Cape, etc. were
looked upon at the time of their discovery as ownerless territories [terra
nullius]; for the natives were counted as nothing’. But far from justifying
the imperial mission, Kant then argues that under the pretext of spreading
trade (to India), the natives were oppressed through widespread wars,
famine ‘and the whole litany of evils which can afflict the human race’
(1970b: 106). For Kant, such intolerable cruelty is the trade-mark of
European imperialism and, in a well-directed jibe against the concept of
the imperial civilizing mission, he concludes that all this is ‘the work
of powers who make endless ado about their piety, and who wish to be
considered as chosen believers while they live on the fruits of their ini-
quity’ (1970b: 107). He then immediately reiterates the point that such
behavior violates cosmopolitan right, so that as long as this continues no
progress towards a perpetual peace is possible (1970b: 108). In sum, then,
it seems fair to conclude that the ‘social efficiency trap-door’ that leads
back into the pro-imperialist chamber – typified by Locke and others – is
locked tight in Kant’s schema.
The one possible caveat to this robust anti-imperial position that
postcolonial-inspired critics might offer up here lies in the point that Kant
would positively support the extension of trading relations as an informal
civilizing influence in the East. Interestingly, Kant partially pre-empts this
charge when he insists that such commercial relations must not involve
unequal or exploitative exchange and that the entering into trading
relations can only be done through the consent of the non-European
countries. As Muthu recognizes, Kant’s ‘category of cosmopolitan right
attempts to articulate an ideal, which can both condemn European
imperialism and encourage nonexploitative and peaceful transnational
relations’ (Muthu, 2003: 192). Nevertheless, postcolonialists might
respond by arguing that for Kant, extending nonexploitative trading
relations promotes Western norms insofar as it pacifies states by propel-
ling them into an economically interdependent relationship, which in turn
propels them into a more commercial society such that the benefits of
doing so exceed the costs of breaking such links through warfare. Indeed,
as Kant put it: ‘the spirit of commerce sooner or later takes hold of every
people, and it cannot exist side by side with war’ (1970b: 114). Crucial
here is the claim that trade has an informal ‘civilizing impact’, insofar as it
helps push all societies towards capitalism and republicanism, which in

turn constitute crucial preconditions for a future perpetual peace.
Here it is critical to appreciate that for Kant this ‘civilizing push factor’
should not be conflated with the ‘signal trigger’ or ‘catalytic effect’ that
the formal-imperial civilizing mission entails within the paternalist
Eurocentric institutionalist variant, not least because Kant seeks to
exorcize all notions of Western compulsion. This in part derives from his
belief that all societies will spontaneously evolve or auto-develop – an
argument which fundamentally differentiates this genre from that of its
paternalist Eurocentric institutionalist cousin – and in part on the basis
that states do not have the right to impose trading relations or trading
obligations on others because the receiving societies have the right to
refuse consent, as we have already noted (see also Doyle, 1983a: 227;
1983b: 325, 331; Muthu, 2003: 155–162; Jahn, 2006: 187–188). Thus,
unlike his paternalist ideological ‘cousins’, Kant (and Smith) advocated a
consistent or universalist conception of negative freedom/minimalist state
interventionism that would apply equally at home and in the treatment of
non-European societies abroad. The key question now becomes: was this
anti-paternalist ‘universalist’ stance a function of an anti-Eurocentric
‘cultural pluralist’ ethos, as Muthu argues?
Muthu believes that Kant’s ethnology, which was developed in his poli-
tical writings, stood outside of the ‘common scientific racist’ markers of
parts of eighteenth century European thought. This is significant given that
postcolonial-inspired critics sometimes denounce Kant precisely for his
scientific racism (e.g. Eze, 1997; Bernasconi, 2001; Tully, 2002: 342–343;
Bowden, 2009: 146). Noteworthy here is that Kant certainly relied heavily
on scientific racism in his anthropological writings and lectures (e.g. Kant,
1997a, b, c, 2001a). However, we agree with Muthu (2003: 181–184) in
that such racism played no part in his political writings on international
relations. Nevertheless, it is this rejection of scientific racism that leads
Muthu to mistakenly conclude that Kant advocated a ‘cultural pluralism’;
one that was premised on what Muthu calls ‘cultural agency’. This pre-
sumes a respect for the equality of all peoples and, therefore, by implication,
a tolerance of non-European societies. He also claims that Kant did not
privilege civilized societies over uncivilized ones. And because all were held
on an egalitarian, non-hierarchical normative footing, so Kant allegedly
rejected judging non-European societies against a universal Western norm.
To this end Muthu emphasizes the consistent claim made by Kant that
civilized European societies were far from perfect and were shot through
with all manner of injustices and conflicts between individuals in their quest
for gratification through power and prestige both at home and in relation to
the non-European world abroad.
The key argument that Muthu makes against the Eurocentric charge is
that while Kant envisaged a moral duty on each individual to self-
improve, nevertheless Muthu insists that Kant saw no corresponding duty
for whole peoples to improve or perfect themselves and to thereby move
towards an idealized Western terminus. He claims that ‘it is possible that
Kant saw no inevitability in the transition from a non-settled [pre-civil] to
settled society [ie. civil states]’, offering up Kant’s claim in The Anthro-
pology: that it is unusual for peoples to move from a non-settled/pre-civil
to a settled/civil society (Muthu, 2003: 204), thereby suggesting that Kant
was tolerant of non-European societies.
But Muthu’s position is problematized by two inter-related Eurocentric
arguments that form the basis of Kant’s normative politics as well as his
stadial model of historical development. First, Kant views it as a cate-
gorical imperative that people in a state of nature enter a social contract,
thereby undergoing a transition from non-settled to settled societies (or
from hunter-gatherer/pastoral societies to sedentary agricultural/com-
mercial ones) so that they can later join the pacific federation of repub-
lican states. And second, Kant insists that history is marked by progress,
whereby societies progress through stages, beginning with the savage state
of nature, before evolving into barbaric states only to culminate in capi-
talist/republican civilization. So fundamental are these claims to Kant’s
work that Muthu is forced into something of a high-wire balancing act
requiring all sorts of precarious intellectual acrobatics in order to sustain
his argument. For while he concedes the categorical imperative argument,
he seeks to subvert the conclusion to which it necessarily gives rise by
insisting that there is no imperative for ‘whole peoples’ or societies to
progress and thereby acquire ideal Western civilizational properties. Our
reply will look at each of these claims in reverse order.
In his famous essay, ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan
Purpose’, Kant ascribes a progressive teleology to the unfolding of human
societies through history. At the very outset he asserts that while recog-
nizing that the laws of human history are very difficult to detect, never-
theless ‘we may hope that what strikes us in the actions of individuals as
confused and fortuitous may be recognized, in the history of the entire
species, as a steadily advancing but slow development of man’s original
capacities’ (1970a: 41). Nature intends, almost behind the backs of
individuals, an advance in human societies. Interestingly, Kant effectively
deploys an argument that is almost identical to the role played by Adam
Smith’s ‘invisible hand’. Thus while society develops according to the
invisible hand of selfish individual competition for Smith (1776/1937: 14,
421, 423), so in the discussion of his ‘fourth proposition’, Kant sees in the
selfish and egoistic intentions of individuals and their resulting antagonisms
(their ‘unsocial sociability’) a necessary ‘evil’ that propels societies forward

towards the terminus of human history – the pacific federation of republican
capitalist states.
Here Muthu confuses Kant’s emphasis on evil and selfish antagonisms
within civilized societies with a critique of such societies. But these evils
function in a progressive rather than regressive way in Kant’s schema.
Thus, he argues that facing up to these antagonisms comprises
the first true steps [being] taken from barbarism to culture [civilization],
which in fact consists in the social worthiness of man. All man’s talents
are now gradually developed, his taste cultivated, and by a continued
process of enlightenment, a beginning is made towards establishing a
way of thinking which cany transform the primitive natural capacity
for moral discrimination into definite practical principles, and thus a
pathologically enforced social union is transformed into a moral whole
(1970a: 44–45).
This culminates in the unequivocal claim that civilized societies are indeed
superior to non-civil ones and that mankind has a duty to proceed out of
barbarism and savagery into civilized society; the very inverse claim to
that ascribed by Muthu. Thus, Kant asserts:
Without these asocial qualities (far from admirable in themselves),
which cause the resistance inevitably encountered by each individual as
he furthers his self-seeking pretensions, man would live an Arcadian,
pastoral existence of perfect concord, self-sufficiency and mutual love
(1970a: 45).
Such qualities are interpreted by Muthu as a positive endorsement of
pastoral societies by Kant. But Kant claims just the opposite by saying
that within pastoral societies
[A]ll human talents would remain hidden forever in a dormant state, and
men, as good-natured as the sheep they tended, would scarcely render
their existence more valuable than that of their animals. The end for
which they were created, their rational nature, would be an unfilled void
(1970a: 45).
Kant then concludes that nature should be thanked for fostering this
unsocial sociability since without it ‘all man’s excellent natural capacities
would never be roused to develop. Man wishes concord [i.e. pre-civil
social existence], but nature, knowing better what is good for his species
wishes discord’. In such ways, Kant argues, we can envisage ‘the design of
a wise creator’ rather than a ‘malicious spirit’. Thus, reminiscent of Smith,
individual selfishness or even maliciousness is the motor that drives
historical development towards civilization (1970b: 108–114).
The anti-teleological stance that Muthu attributes to Kant in order to

support the conclusion that Kant saw no duty of peoples to self-improve runs
up against a second major inter-related problem which concerns his calling
for a pacific federation of republican states. In essence, if there is no
mechanism for progress from pre-civil societies to civilized states – either one
that is imposed from without via European imperialism (as indeed there is
not in Kant’s schema) or through some kind of endogenous motor operating
within pre-civil societies including the role of human agency – then the very
idea of movement towards a pacific federation becomes logically unattain-
able. This is so not least because such a federation cannot come about until
all societies undertake a social contract and proceed onto civilization. Thus a
key pillar of Kant’s politics – the creation of the pacific federation – is
logically, albeit unwittingly, removed by Muthu thereby undermining the
edifice of Kant’s cosmopolitan politics. This point might be reinforced by
posing a rhetorical question: was it really Kant’s objective to render the
pacific federation of republican states wholly utopian? For this is the logical
upshot of exorcizing the progressive dynamic of history from Kant’s schema.
Kant’s insistence that all peoples must leave the state of nature is a run-
ning theme of his most famous work, Perpetual Peace. There he insists that
a perpetual peace will be violated if just one party remains in a separate state
of nature, which would result in a risk of war (1970b: 99). Moreover, in
discussing his second definitive article he asserts that ‘each nation, for the
sake of its own security, can and ought to demand of the others that they
should enter along with it into a constitution, similar to the civil one, within
which the rights of each could be secured. This would mean establishing a
federation of peoples’ (1970b: 102). He is also contemptuous of savage/
barbaric societies asserting that ‘we look with profound contempt upon the
way in which savages cling to their lawless freedomy [and] prefer the
freedom of folly to the freedom of reason. We regard this as barbarism,
coarseness, and brutish debasement of humanity’ (1970b: 102). And in a
rarely discussed footnote Kant goes so far as to assert that:
It is usually assumed that one cannot take hostile action against anyone
unless one has already been injured by them. This is perfectly correct if
both parties are living in a legal civil state. For the fact that the one has
entered such a state gives the required guarantee to the other, since both
are subject to the same authority. But man (or an individual people) in a
mere state of nature robs me of any such security and injures me by
virtue of this very state in which he coexists with me. He may not have
injured me activelyy but he does injure me by the very lawlessness of
his state [or condition]y for he is a permanent threat to me, and I can
require him either to enter into a common lawful state along with me or
to move away from my vicinity (1970b: 98, his emphases).
There are two ways of reading this quote. First it might be claimed that,
unlike Locke and Hobbes, Kant never equated the state of nature with
specific societies such as pre-1492 America since it was merely an abstract
hypothetical concept that applied only to the anarchic system of inter-
state relations. But a second reading is possible; one which suggests that
Western states can ‘require’ individual savage societies living in a state of
nature to acquire civilization and subsequently enter into a federation of
republican capitalist states, thereby offering an imperial trigger. For the
fact is that Kant’s usage of the state of nature was not an abstract one
confined to IR but was indeed applied to actual individual societies. As he
put it in The Metaphysics, ‘there can only be a few in a state of nature, as
in the wilds of America’ (1970c: 166). Thus Kant echoed Hobbes and
Locke in equating the state of nature with the condition of Amerindian
society. Moreover, within the long quote posted above, he seems to be
implying that an individual people can live in a separate domestic state
of nature.
The upshot of this second reading suggests that for Kant, peace cannot
be achieved so long as individual pre-civil societies exist, given that they
comprise a permanent threat to civilized states on the one hand and that
they are incapable of entering into a lawful relationship with such states
on the other. Indeed, with respect to the latter point Kant prefaces this by
saying that ‘unless one neighbor gives a guarantee to the other at his
request (which can only happen in a lawful state), the latter may treat him
as an enemy’ (Kant, 1970b: 98). Moreover, the quote also suggests that
civil states might compel non-civil societies to undergo a social contract
(implying a possible ‘civilizing’ mandate). And while Muthu might
emphasize Kant’s claim that savage societies can always move away from
the vicinity of civil states (as the final part of the quote indeed suggests)
and thereby avoid undertaking a social contract, against this is the very
point that Muthu also highlights elsewhere with respect to Kant’s argu-
ment about globalization: that because humans live in a ‘sphere [so] they
cannot dispense infinitely but must finally put up with being near one
another’ (Kant cited in Muthu, 2003: 192). This effectively means, in
terms of the quote above, that there is no longer any hiding place where
savage societies can be reproduced, so that civil states might indeed
compel savage societies to enter a social contract. Regardless of a
potential imperialist cue (Bowden, 2009: 147–148), the key upshot here is
that Kant was intolerant of uncivilized non-European societies.
Thus for Kant, those individual societies that live within a domestic
state of nature ‘must renounce their savage and lawless freedom, adapt
themselves to public coercive laws, and thus form an international state
[i.e. a pacific federation of republican states]’ (1970b: 104). That is, they
must move towards a capitalist republican form as a pre-requisite for the

creation of a future pacific international federation. This is reinforced by
the eighth proposition outlined in his essay ‘Idea for a Universal History’
where he asserts that ‘the history of the human race as a whole can be
regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature – one which begins
with the internal construction of a political constitution and culminates
in a pacific federation of republican states’ (1970a: 50). Accordingly,
Muthu’s defensive claim that Kant believed that non-European societies
should avoid the ‘civilizing process’ seems unsustainable.
However, the implications of this final point, one that expresses a tel-
eological historical schema, might be challenged by a number of Kantian
scholars. Defenders of Kant insist that his progressive theory of history is
not teleological. More specifically, they argue that such a teleological
reading obscures Kant’s vision of the role of human agency and choice in
the making of historical progress (e.g. Apel, 1997; Wood, 2006; Brown,
2009: 37–44). From here they might jump to the conclusion that our
reading of Kant’s theory of history as teleological is not only problematic
in itself but more importantly, that it also undermines the Eurocentric
charge, not least because European societies had not reached the height of
civilization (thereby negating our assumption that for Kant civilization is
conflated with Europe at that time). But what such defenders really seem
to be concerned with is less Kant’s teleology and more the imputation of a
deterministic historical schema. It would seem entirely fair to suggest that
Kant ascribed a clear role for human agency. Indeed, men make their own
destiny, but not simply from constraints laid down by the past (as Marx
argued), but also from the future: ‘men act freely, to whom, it is true,
what they ought to do may be dictated in advance’ (Kant, 2001b: 141).
The similarities here with Marx’s conception of agency are striking and
yet, of course, few would deny that Marx’s theory of history was tele-
ological. Adding in the role of human agency, then, does not immunize
Kant from the teleological charge though it certainly qualifies the deter-
minist charge.
Nevertheless, Kant very much had a normative telos in mind – the
federation of advanced capitalist republican states (as opposed to Marx’s
future federation of stateless societies) – and this was a projection of how
he wished European history would progress given that it had clearly not
yet arrived at this terminus, though he was also clear that this end-point
could only be realized through human agency girded with cosmopolitan
intent. And yet his ultimate stage of human destiny was an extrapolation
forward of the stages model that he had derived from reading Europe’s
historical past as it progressed through savagery and barbarism (see
especially Kant, 1970a: 52). Note that almost all stages theorists of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries adopted teleological schemas on the

basis that the final stage had not yet been reached, including Marx, Smith
and even Spencer (where for the latter, British imperialism had led to a
‘rebarbarization’ of British society). Indeed the whole point of their the-
oretical interventions was precisely to advocate the political means
necessary to reach the end of history. But that does not immunize them
from the Eurocentric charge because their normative prescriptions were –
in all cases – derived from their understanding of the European experi-
ence, past and present.
In sum, then, Kant’s approach exemplifies a Eurocentric stadial model of
development while defending an idealized conception of European civili-
zation to which all non-European states should and would eventually
conform (see also Tully, 2002). But in the light of Muthu’s argument, the
irony is that the underlying rationale for Kant’s anti-imperialist posture lies
in his anti-paternalist Eurocentric ‘cultural monism’, which asserts that non-
European societies did not require imperial intervention precisely because
they would auto-develop, one way or another, through the various stages to
arrive at the terminus of an idealized European civilization.
Adam Smith: anti-paternalist Eurocentric foundations of

anti-imperial cosmopolitical-economy
A second exemplar of this category is Adam Smith who, in so many
respects, pre-empts Kant. However, given limited space, we shall confine
our discussion to the issue of Eurocentrism in Smith’s work. In engaging
with Jennifer Pitts, and contra postcolonialism, we agree that Smith was
anti-imperialist (1776/1937: 523–607). This was motivated in part by his
revulsion of the repressive imperial policies of the Europeans (e.g. 1776/
1937: 555, 590), though for the most part it was a function of his
anti-mercantilist posture, given that colonialism was founded on state
interventionism, monopoly commercial relations, and predatory trading
corporations (Muthu, 2008; Hobson, 2009: Ch. 3). For Smith, colonial-
ism was detrimental both to the colonies and the imperial power. But the
critical issue is whether his rejection of imperialism was a product of
cultural pluralism or (an anti-paternalist) Eurocentrism.
In A Turn to Empire Pitts accepts that Smith was a universalist who was
committed to the stadial model of development, and that he also
approved of commercial society over pre-modern ones (as did Kant). But,
she argues, his approach to non-European societies was very different to
that found in the writings of liberals such as J.S. Mill. According to Pitts,
in Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith displayed considerable cross-cultural
moral empathy, or ‘tolerant impartiality’, for the cultural practices of
non-European peoples; something that, she argues, stands in marked

contrast to the vitriolic Western triumphalism and dismissive contempt
of non-European peoples that characterizes mid-nineteenth century
(paternalist) liberalism (Pitts, 2005: 25, 26, 43–52). She also claims that
Smith saw all societies as equally rational and equally able. We agree fully
that Smith’s approach did not denigrate non-Western peoples and nor did
it celebrate the white race.
But contra Pitts, in the first instance Smith was critical of the institu-
tions of non-European societies – something that was apparent in a rarely
discussed passage found in his Lectures on Jurisprudence (Smith, 1762–3/
1982: 143–171). There he begins with a discussion of polygamy and
concludes that all the institutions of certain societies, including the East
Indies, Persia, Turkey and Egypt, were irrational and regressive. Never-
theless, our key point lies elsewhere: that Pitts is looking in the wrong
place for signs of Smith’s Eurocentrism, conflating it with a vitriolic
Western triumphalism rather than an anti-paternalist Eurocentric dis-
course that, we argue, underpins his whole cosmopolitical economic
theory (as much as postcolonialists look in the wrong place for signs of his
Eurocentric discourse).
The cue for this alternative reading lies in the point made by Ronald
Meek: that stadial model theorists such as Smith ‘interpret development in
the pre-commercial stages in terms of the economic categories appropriate
to contemporary [Western] capitalism’ (Meek, 1976: 222). He rightly
notes a shift in Smith’s analysis. Thus the 1762–3 Lectures present a
universalist account of development, where each stage corresponds to a
certain demographic threshold. But this analysis is subsequently replaced
in The Wealth of Nations by a Western-provincialist framework. Thus,
rather than levels of population density determining the shift from one
stage to the next, in 1776 Smith emphasizes specifically European insti-
tutional properties, which are then extrapolated back in time to create a
‘universalist’ stagist developmental model. That is, wealth is explained by
the extension of the division of labor, the level of commodity exchange
and the accumulation of capital, rather than in terms of demographic
shifts and modes of subsistence (Meek 1976: 220–222). These three
factors reach their most concentrated form within European commercial
society. But the key point here is that Smith then reasons backwards,
explaining the lower stages of subsistence through the absence or limited
presence of these three factors. In this way, the non-European world is
read through the attributes of extant European society and is found
variously wanting. The discourse of ‘presences’ within the West and their
‘absence’ in the East is one of the leitmotifs of Eurocentric development
theory.
The critical point is that in The Wealth of Nations the non-European

world is judged according to a European standard; and it is judged to be
consistently inferior in socio-economic and institutional terms. No less
importantly, each society is assumed to auto-develop and to generate
through endogenous developments. Accordingly, Europe self-generated or
auto-developed through all four stages and the final breakthrough to
industrial modernity is assumed to have been achieved single-handedly by
the Europeans. Crucially, this trajectory becomes naturalized and is held
up to be the single path along which all societies will inevitably tread in
the fullness of time, thereby issuing a universal model of development to
which Eastern societies will eventually conform. Or, put differently, Smith
‘read’ non-European societies against a universalized Western norm. To
borrow Karl Marx’s famous aphorism: for Smith, advanced European
society only reveals to the non-Europeans the image of their own future.
In this way, what appears to be a purely universal model of development
turns out to be based on a parochial European model writ large.
Once again, this reading might be challenged by the claim that Smith,
like Kant, was at times critical of European capitalism (e.g. his critique of
alienation) and that Smith’s conception of the final stage was based not on
what Europe looked like at the time given its preference for mercantilism.
But again, as with Kant, the political purpose of his work was aspira-
tional: to urge European governments to consolidate their position within
commercial-industrial civilization by adopting laissez-faire; a trend which
was discernible, but certainly not clearly apparent, within British society
at the time. But this does not detract from his assumption that European
society was closest in this regard and that the properties – actual and
aspirational – were founded on a European conception of civilization.
All in all, like Kant, Smith believed that all societies and peoples would
traverse the different stages of development of their own accord, thereby
implicitly negating the need for a civilizing mission that is deemed to be so
important for paternalist Eurocentric liberals. Moreover, when harnessed
to an explicit critique of colonialism, so this anti-paternalist variant
establishes its credentials as an anti-imperialist theory, though one foun-
ded on a particular brand of Eurocentric institutionalism as opposed
to one founded on a cultural pluralism. Thus when Meek suggests that
‘[m]en like Turgot and Smith were apt to ascribe the superiority of con-
temporary European society (in so far as they did in fact recognize
its superiority)3 to the existence of certain important socio-economic
3
This should not be read as an implicit critique of European society in Smith’s work given
that Meek is referring to the point that Smith did not see contemporary European capitalism as
perfect in every regard.
institutions and phenomena’ (Meek 1976: 129), he was in fact describing

the essential properties of (anti-paternalist) Eurocentric institutionalism.
Defensive scientific racism: liberal anti-imperialism (Box D)

Finally, we identify a third group of liberal international thinkers, which was
indeed anti-imperialist as the received wisdom suggests and contra post-
colonialism, but was so on scientific racist grounds rather than as a function
of any inherent liberal predisposition towards cultural pluralism. This dis-
cussion will also necessarily problematize the postcolonial assumption that
racist social Darwinism represents the pinnacle of imperialist thinking.
Moreover, as we explained in Table 1, although we treat defensive scientific
racism as a single category, nevertheless it comprises a universalist and a
relativist strand. We shall take each briefly in turn.
Herbert Spencer (and William Graham Sumner): anti-paternalist

racist universalism at home and abroad
The general understanding of Spencer is subject to considerable confusion,
with many postcolonialists and others assuming that social Darwinism was
the highest expression of imperialist racism. But social Darwinism was
internally divided between a laissez-faire variant (as in Spencer and Sumner)
and an interventionist one (as in Ward), where the former was strongly anti-
imperialist as opposed to the latter’s pro-imperialist posture. And, as noted
earlier, Spencer was not in fact a pure social Darwinist but drew considerably
on Lamarckian racism. Indeed, Spencer rejected Darwin’s belief that
organisms and humans change through accidental variation in the struggle
for survival, and instead adopted Lamarck’s claim that acquired character-
istics are inherited (Gossett, 1997: 151–2; Stocking, 1982; Bell and Sylvest,
2006: 224). As noted earlier, Lamarck’s key insight was to combine genetic
properties with social behavior, which in turn undermines the popular belief
that Spencer focussed only on genetics and race struggle as determining the
development or non-development of societies. His Lamarckianism also
allowed room for the role of human agency, thereby undermining the pop-
ular belief that Spencer’s schema was rigidly deterministic. Note too that
even Lamarckian influence was schizophrenic insofar as it could yield an
anti-imperialism (Spencer) or a pro-imperialism (Reinsch, Wilson). More-
over, Gossett points out that Spencer’s racism was far more malleable and
allowed for race modification that was absent in the harsher variants. Indeed
it was precisely his Lamarckian conception of anti-imperialism that fre-
quently ‘annoyed racists who favored imperialist domination of the primitive
races’ (Gossett, 1997: 152).
Reminiscent of the stages model of Kant and Smith, Spencer’s theory of

social evolution envisaged above all a universal developmental process,
whereby all societies naturally evolve over time from primitive savagery
through barbarism (‘militant society’) and into civilization (industrial
society). Crucially for Spencer, social evolution towards civilization is not
the monopolistic preserve of the white race but is a universal feature of all
races and societies. In particular, the process of social evolution is gov-
erned by the telos of human perfection (which awaits all societies and
races). ‘The ultimate development of the ideal man is logically certain – as
certain as any conclusion in which we place the most implicit faith; for
instance that all men will diey Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but
a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is a part of nature [and
is therefore open to all races]’ (1851/1864: 79–80).
But equally, Spencer was clear that the white race was the superior one
and that it had pioneered the breakthrough into industrial modernity
all by itself. In Principles of Sociology, I, Spencer argues that the non-
European races are physically smaller and weaker (Ch. 5), and that the
inferior races are given over to wholly irrational behavior governed by
passion and impulsiveness, leading him to conclude that the mind of
primitive savages is equivalent to the childhood of civilized men (1896/
2004: 59–60). Indeed primitive minds are incapable of gasping abstract
ideas derived through higher generalization and are therefore incapable of
attaining truth and causality (1896/2004: Ch. 6). Nevertheless, despite the
many limitations of non-European races they are destined, albeit in the
very long run, to reach civilization.
The key point is that the universal progress of all non-European
societies can only be attained in the absence of Western intervention. To
imperially intervene would serve only to disturb their natural evolu-
tionary trajectory (Spencer, 1881, 1902; Sumner, 1883/2007). Equally,
imperialism serves only to reverse the progress of Western civilized society
through what he terms the ‘rebarbarization of civilization’ (1902:
157–200), which converts subjects into virtual slaves, where each indi-
vidual is forced to perform compulsory service to the state in ways that
are reminiscent of coercive feudalism or militant society.
The final part of his argument against imperialism returns us to one of
the common themes of much, though not all, of racist thinking (for an
exception see Ward 1903/2002: 203–241). This concerns the degenerative
effect of miscegenation upon the white race. Inter-breeding between
superior and inferior races was categorically wrong (though he was
extremely positive about mixing the allied varieties of the Aryan race).
When asked in 1892 by a Japanese political leader concerning whether
the inter-marriage of foreigners with Japanese people was a good idea,
he replied by saying that it should be ‘positively forbidden’. For as he

went onto explain:
The physiological basisy appears to be that any one variety of creature
in [the] course of many generations acquires a certain constitutional
adaptation to its particular form of lifey [Thus] if you mix the con-
stitutions of two widely divergent varieties which have severally become
adapted to widely divergent modes of life, you get a constitution which
is adapted to the mode of life of neither – a constitution which will not
work properly, because it is not fitted for any set of conditions whatever
(Spencer cited in Gossett, 1997: 151).
Or as Sumner put it, ‘[n]o one has yet found any way in which two
races, far apart in blood and culture, can be amalgamated into one
society with satisfaction to both’ (1903/1911: 35). And as Sumner also
argued, the problem with imperialism is that it allows non-white races
into the United States, which would then subvert the democratic ideals
of the country. For this reason, Sumner concludes, better to give non-
white races ‘independence and to let them work out their own salvation
or go without it’ (1898/1911: 312). Thus imperialism should also be
avoided for the degenerative impact that it would have on the white
race, and for white civilization at large, as much as for the harmful
effects it would impose on the backward colonized societies. Overall,
then, the belief that non-European societies should be left alone to
determine themselves, turns out to emanate not from cultural pluralism
but from a particular brand of scientific racism.
Blair and Jordan: anti-paternalist racist relativism and the

critique of empire
The relativist strand shared with its universalist cousin a rejection of
imperialism on ‘defensive racist’ grounds, though it differed insofar as
it assumed that non-European races were largely incapable of auto-
developing. Two key representatives of this strand were James L. Blair
and David Starr Jordan. In the first instance, in critiquing the idea of US
imperialism, they appeared to appeal to conventionally understood liberal
sensibilities. Both emphasized the point that to govern an inferior race is
to betray the American Constitution, invoking Washington’s insistence
on national isolation on the grounds that the United States has no rights
to expand abroad and to oppress other nations. This was twinned with
a robust critique of the civilizing mission. Nevertheless, rather than
reflecting a liberal cultural pluralism, their arguments emanated from a
defensive racist core that had several dimensions.
First, they argue, like Sumner and Spencer (and many others) that the
white race cannot survive in the tropics. The heat of the tropics serves
only to effect a degeneration of the physical and intellectual energy of the
Europeans (Blair 1899: 13–14). Or as Jordan put it, the Philippines
lie in the heart of the torrid zone, ‘Nature’s asylum for degenerates’y.
[T]he conditions of life are such as to forbid Anglo-Saxon colonizati-
ony Individual exceptions and special cases to the contrary, the Anglo-
Saxon or any other civilized race degenerates in the tropics mentally,
morally, physically (Jordan, 1901: 93–94, and 95–102).
Blair describes the temperament and behavior of the inferior tropical
races through the impact of climate. The Malay is a ‘gambler, a profligate,
indolent, untruthful, even in the confessional, disobedient, cruel to ani-
mals and enemies, superstitious’, while the Moslems are ‘warlike, fana-
tical and dangerous’. Above all, the Negroes are ‘black savages, closely
resembling apes in shape and tree climbing habitsy clothed only in gir-
dlesy [T]hey have cannibalistic habits and are worshippers of the moon’
(Blair, 1899: 14–15).
Second, Blair invokes an argument concerning the perils of immigration
that appears at first sight to conform to the racial egalitarian principle of
the 14th Amendment. Closer inspection reveals that this Amendment is
invoked as a means to keep the inferior races out of the United States. For
defensive American racists in general, colonizing the inferior tropical
races will mean that they will inevitably gain residence in the US through
legalized immigration and, armed with the vote, would be able to exercise
some sort of political control over white Americans. This would be
intolerable because these races are incapable of living up to the duties and
obligations of citizenship, to wit: ‘wherever degenerate, dependent or
alien races are within our borders today they are no part of the United
States. They constitute a social problem; a menace to peace [democracy]
and welfare’ (Jordan, 1901: 44). Moreover, non-white immigration had to
be avoided since this could lead to miscegenation and hence the degen-
eration of the white American race (Blair, 1899: 23).
Finally, they argue that colonizing the inferior races is, in any case, a
pointless task not least because ‘history shows no instance of a tropical
people who have demonstrated a capacity for maintaining an enduring
form of Republican government’ (Blair, 1899: 18). Or as Jordan put it,
‘the race problem of the tropics are perennial and insoluble, for free
institutions cannot exist where free men cannot live. The territorial
expansion now contemplated would not extend our institutions, because
the proposed colonies are incapable of self-government (Jordan, 1901: 44).
This is because the tropics condemn the inferior races to slavery. ‘These
people in such a climate can never have self-government in the Anglo-

Saxon sense’ (Jordan, 1901: 32). Unlike Spencer’s defensive racism, this
brand sees no hope for the development of non-white races. The best that
can be done is to leave them alone. Given that the United States was
already involved in the ‘civilizing mission’ at the turn of the twentieth
century, so Jordan recommends that ‘the only sensible thing [for the US]
to do would be to pull out some dark night and escape from the great
problem of the Orient as suddenly and dramatically as we got into it’
(Jordan, 1901: 52). Ultimately, then, it is from a commitment to (defensive)
scientific racism rather than cultural pluralism whence their anti-imperialist
arguments stem.
Conclusions
Postcolonial and postcolonial-inspired/non-Eurocentric scholars have

provided an important service in revealing the insight that classical lib-
eralism was founded on a Eurocentric discursive base. In this article we
have sought not so much to critique postcolonial insight but to extend it
much further, revealing the multiple variants of Eurocentrism/Orientalism
in the c. 1760–1914 period. We have, however, gone one critical step
further by arguing that two of the four variants were anti-imperialist
which, of course, departs from postcolonialism’s monochromatic equa-
tion of Eurocentrism with imperialism. In this context we have offered a
conception of the ‘protean career of polymorphous liberalism’ and
revealed how it crystallizes in imperialist and anti-imperialist variants
over time. This in turn means that while liberalism does have an essential
core set of principles – including robust institutions either at the domestic
or the international and domestic levels that are premised on the idea of
individual freedom – nevertheless these can only cut in or operate once all
peoples across the world have attained sufficient levels of rationality and
hence civilization.
But perhaps the key issue at stake now hinges on whether our frame-
work has ramifications for rethinking modern (post-1989) liberalism, for
without this dimension the article might be viewed as having relevance
only for the historiography of the discipline. First of all, it is well-known
that a number of variants of modern liberal IR theory – including liberal
internationalism, interdependence theory, democratic peace theory/cos-
mopolitanism – find their antecedents in the likes of Smith, Cobden, and
Kant. But second, beyond these inferences, parts of our framework
remain directly relevant today. Thus while we view liberalism in the
1945–1989 era as grounded in a subliminal Eurocentric institutionalism,
having dropped the language of civilizations/barbarians and the civilizing
mission, and having moved away from scientific racism (Hobson, 2009,
Ch. 8), nevertheless after the Cold War liberal IR theory has in effect gone
back to the future of late-eighteenth/nineteenth century Eurocentric insti-
tutionalism (Hobson, 2009: Ch. 11; Hobson, 2010). More specifically, with
the exorcizing of scientific racism after 1945, we find that the majority
of post-1989 liberal IR theories have returned to paternalist Eurocentric
institutionalism (Box A, Table 2), though a minority embraces anti-
paternalist Eurocentric institutionalism (Box B). The paternalist liberals
make a range of arguments including the advocacy of: humanitarian
interventionism/responsibility to protect (e.g. Fernando Téson, John Iken-
berry and Anne-Marie Slaughter); the spread of democracy/democratic
peace (e.g. Roger Owen, Bruce Russett and Francis Fukuyama); a ‘concert
of democracies’ (Ikenberry and Slaughter); trusteeships and shared sover-
eignty (e.g. Jeffrey Herbst and Fukuyama); the intensified spread of free
trade and liberal capitalism (e.g. Thomas Friedman and Martin Wolf).
In essence they argue that the West has a duty or a burden to remake
(or civilize) the uncivilized non-Western world in the West’s image for
the betterment of ‘global humanity’. Perhaps the best example of anti-
paternalist Eurocentric liberals are those who adhere to the ‘pluralist’
rather than ‘solidarist’ wing of the modern English School, arguing strongly
against any forms of Western interventionism in the non-Western world
(e.g. William Bain and Robert Jackson). And precisely because modern
liberalism has gone back to much of its late-eighteenth/nineteenth century
origins, so the argument of this article has particular relevance to liberal
international theory both past and present.
Acknowledgements
We are most grateful to: Duncan Bell, Brett Bowden, Garrett Brown, John
Gray, George Lawson, Bob Vitalis, and Matthew Watson for their com-
ments; to those who made suggestions at various presentations (CSGR,
Warwick, the Danish Institute for International Studies); the four anonymous
reviewers and, most especially, to the editors for their extensive suggestions.
Naturally, though, the usual rider applies.
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International Theory (2010), 2:2, 210–245 & European Consortium for Political Research, 2010

Liberal International theory: Eurocentric

Keywords: liberalism; postcolonialism; Eurocentrism/Orientalism;

International Relations (IR) scholars conventionally perceive – often as an

* E-mails: Martin.Hall@svet.lu.se, j.m.hobson@shef.ac.uk

above all, a non-interventionist anti-imperialist posture, all of which stems

changing discourses of Eurocentrism within which it is embedded. Of

within a Eurocentric imperialist mould. Engaging critically as well as

Problematizing Eurocentrism and the postcolonial critique of

distant chronological past and demonstrating the unbroken centrality of

How does all this relate to the postcolonial-inspired/non-Eurocentric

intra-European state relations are marked by the principles of mutual

Outlining four variants of Eurocentrism

Table 1. Taxonomy of the different ideal-typical forms of Eurocentrism/

Eurocentric A Paternalism B Anti-paternalism

Scientific racism C Offensive scientific racism D Defensive scientific racism

the headlining postcolonial umbrella term of Orientalism/Eurocentrism,

either domestically or externally. Accordingly, this means that it is

Table 2. Taxonomy of the ideal-typical relations of Eurocentrism/

Eurocentric A Paternalists B Anti-Paternalists

Scientific racists C Offensive racists D Defensive racists

The second generic variant, ‘offensive scientific racism’, could be found

of these categories in turn (omitting Box C – ‘offensive scientific racism’)

Paternalist Eurocentric institutionalism: liberal imperialism (Box A)

Richard Cobden: for ‘peaceful universal interdependence’ or

critique of ‘big government’, where increased military expenditures

‘Men of war to conquer colonies, to yield to us a monopoly of their

certainly qualify this view. In his 1835 pamphlet chapter on Ireland he

countries (Turkey and Ireland) reflects a liberal predisposition wherein

Anti-paternalist Eurocentric institutionalism: liberal

Immanuel Kant: anti-paternalist Eurocentrism and the critique of

As indicated earlier, many so-called liberal ‘critics’ of empire ended up

Kant takes precisely the opposite stance by taking European imperialists

helps push all societies towards capitalism and republicanism, which in

(their ‘unsocial sociability’) a necessary ‘evil’ that propels societies forward

The anti-teleological stance that Muthu attributes to Kant in order to

must move towards a capitalist republican form as a pre-requisite for the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries adopted teleological schemas on the

Adam Smith: anti-paternalist Eurocentric foundations of

non-European peoples; something that, she argues, stands in marked

The critical point is that in The Wealth of Nations the non-European

institutions and phenomena’ (Meek 1976: 129), he was in fact describing

Defensive scientific racism: liberal anti-imperialism (Box D)

Herbert Spencer (and William Graham Sumner): anti-paternalist

Reminiscent of the stages model of Kant and Smith, Spencer’s theory of

he replied by saying that it should be ‘positively forbidden’. For as he

Blair and Jordan: anti-paternalist racist relativism and the

people in such a climate can never have self-government in the Anglo-

Postcolonial and postcolonial-inspired/non-Eurocentric scholars have

—— (1902), Facts and Comments, New York: D. Appleton and Co.

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