In Praise of Empires: Globalization and Order [Hardcover]

Deepak Lal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 25, 2004

In this timely and controversial book, economist Deepak Lal explores the twin themes of empires and globalization and discusses the place of the US in the current world order. Lal argues that not since the fall of the Roman empire has there been a potential imperial power like the United States today, and asks the question: Is a US imperium needed for the globalization which breeds prosperity? What form should this empire take? Would US domestic politics support this? Would the US tendency to see itself as a moral nation pursuing "universal values" such as democracy, equality and rights run into resistance from other non-western Christian societies? The US has already faced hostile coalitions. What is the history and nature of resistance to US hegemony? Lal explores the Islamic threat to the position of the US and the current "war on terror."

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A fascinating study that addresses some of the most important economic and geopolitical issues of the day. Deepak Lal's thought-provoking analysis, which displays his customary erudition, forces us to look afresh at questions of governance in the contemporary world. He does so by examining the contribution that empires have made to the structure of
governance over the centuries."--Anne O Krueger, First Deputy Managing
Director, IMF

"Penetrating, engaging, well argued, and decidedly unconventional"- John Mueller, Department of Political Science, Ohio State University

"Perhaps only someone with a background as cosmopolitan as Deepak Lal's and a willingness to trespass across disciplinary boundaries could have written such an insightful, forceful, and iconoclastic defence of imperialism which underlines the close relationship between globalization, prosperity, peace, and empire. Any social scientist working in the United States who is willing to write that the United Nations 'is of little use and in a rational world would be wound up' should not be ignored."--Stephen D. Krasner, Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, Stanford University.

"A brilliant and provocative scourge of pious thinking on international politics"--Paul Collier, University of Oxford.

About the Author

Deepak Lal is James S. Coleman Professor of International Development Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and Professor Emeritus of Political Economy, University College of London, and co-director of the Trade and Development Unit at the Institute of Economic Affairs, London.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (November 25, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403936390
• ISBN-13: 978-1403936394
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #512,155 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Andrew Roberts reviews In Praise of Empires by Deepak Lal, June 23, 2005

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CJ - See all my reviews

This review is from: In Praise of Empires: Globalization and Order (Hardcover)

From The Daily Telegraph London January 01, 2005
Why we need empires
Andrew Roberts

Deepak Lal is the nephew of a former mayor of Delhi and Nehru cabinet minister who was imprisoned by the British. Lal is himself a former Indian foreign-service diplomat, Oxford economics don, research administrator for the World Bank, the author of 19 books, and professor of international development at UCLA. He began life believing in the socialist and nationalist ideologies of post-independence India, and so is the ideal person to write a book with the title In Praise of Empires.

"It is evidence and experience," Lal says, "especially in working and travelling in most parts of the Third World during my professional career, which have led me to change my earlier views." In only 216 pages of tautly written, sharply worded and frankly exhilarating text, Lal sets out the case for imperialism in the modern world, and why the United States could bring untold benefits to the planet if only it could shrug off the notion, held ever since the Revolutionary War-era, that empires are bad things per se.

"The order provided by empires," Lal argues, "has been essential for the working of the benign processes of globalisation, which promote prosperity." This splendidly revisionist statement is supported by a wealth of evidence and acutely chosen statistical tables, backed up by an impressive range of sources from fellow intellectuals. Drawing on the ideas of Raymond Aron, Hedley Bull, Niall Ferguson, Michael Oakeshott and many others, Lal none the less constructs his own analysis of where the English-speaking peoples have been, where we're headed and what might happen if we choose not to go there.

As one would expect from such a distinguished scholar, Lal defines his terms carefully, thus: "Globalization is the process of creating a common economic space which leads to a growing integration of the world economy through increasingly free movement of goods, capital and labour," something that he believes is almost always "a positive sum game". Modern America can choose to go down the route of free trade and laissez-faire, thereby enriching the world as well as itself, or it can stick with the New Deal-era populist anti-trust legislation and trade-reciprocity that Lal believes impoverishes both the world and the United States itself.

"Not since the fall of the Roman Empire has there been a potential imperial power like the US today," Lal states, and the role that has been thrust upon her by History, one that she must not now shirk, is to create what he calls a "LIEO", a Liberal International Economic Order. The main attributes of the LIEO imposed by the British in the 19th century were free trade, free mobility of capital, sound money due to the gold standard, property rights guaranteed by law, piracy-free transportation thanks to the Royal Navy, political stability, low domestic taxation and spending, and "gentlemanly" capitalism run from the City of London. "Despite Marxist and nationalist cant," Lal writes, the British empire delivered astonishing growth rates, at least in those places fortunate enough to be coloured pink on the globe.

The great villain of this book is President Woodrow Wilson, whose "utopian world view was a strange mixture of classical liberalism, Burkean conservatism, Presbyterianism, and socialism". It was a combination that propelled Wilson towards giving self-determination to ethnic groupings that had not enjoyed it for centuries, with ultimately disastrous results. Lal also blames Wilson's vandalism of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires in 1919 for creating the circumstances that allowed the rise of Hitler.

To invert Dean Acheson's famous quip about post-Suez Britain, America has found an empire but has yet to find a role. Republicans and Democrats both shun the term "empire" as profoundly un-American, despite the fact that it represents a potentially far higher historic calling than the merely nation-based ideals of 1776. Lal rejects the neo-conservative project of extending democracy throughout the globe, arguing that experience shows that in places like Iran and Algeria it will be used to promote Islamic nihilism and obscurantism. For him modernity - by which he means economic globalisation and enforced order - is the touchstone, and the perfect way for America both to defeat al-Qaeda and to earn the enduring salute of History. Imperialism is an idea whose time has come again.