The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought

This chapter focuses on reception and rejection of radical concepts derived from the learned and political worlds of Europe with reference to the intellectual formation of different societies across the world. In the later eighteenth century, scholars and administrators across the world continued to interpret the abstract political ideas embedded in the great Asian and African traditions: Islam, the Indian Sanskrit tradition, the Confucian and the Buddhist traditions, among others. Most active movements of resistance against European imperialism adopted neo-traditional forms of cultural protectionism as slogans for activism. The chapter argues that classical liberal rights theories were often received in non-European societies in a manner that embedded them in indigenous traditions of civic virtue. It examines two case studies in greater detail. These concern colonial India and early pan-Africanist political thought.