Edmund Burke and the Conservative Logic of Empire

Edmund Burke and the Conservative Logic of Empire is a book of great originality, intellectual power and lucid argument, and a major reappraisal of Burke. The Burke who emerges from these pages is no proto-liberal who later and paradoxically became a conservative in the aftermath of 1789. On the contrary, O'Neill insists he was always a conservative and always an imperialist and that, with very few exceptions, his thought was exceptionally coherent, consistent, and systematic. This is an impressive piece of revisionism.—David Cannadine, author of Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire and The Undivided Past: Humanity Beyond Our Differences   Bold and original, Edmund Burke and the Conservative Logic of Empire is an important intervention in debates about the history of imperial ideology and their continuing legacy. Challenging recent scholarly trends, Daniel O’Neill presents a powerful case that Burke offered a consistent and distinctive justification of empire, one that resonated through the nineteenth century and beyond.—Duncan Bell, University of Cambridge Recent scholars have decided that Edmund Burke was neither a conservative nor an imperialist. Daniel O'Neill assails those views and illuminates the modern politics of empire. His book is impeccably researched, powerfully argued, elegantly written, and devastatingly persuasive. Don't miss it.—Don Herzog, author of Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders